


Resident

by leiascully



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Break Up, F/M, Relationship(s), Separations, The X-Files Revival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-28
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-05-03 18:22:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 33,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5301983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They have missed every other date they might have held significant - birthdays, anniversaries, days of mourning, days of celebration - but they will keep this appointment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Visitor](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4519953) by [leiascully](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully). 



> Timeline: XF Revival  
> So here’s the beginning of Scully’s side of Visitor. I have no schedule for updates, and no guarantees it will offer the catharsis that Visitor did, but I couldn’t leave you thinking that Scully was cold and unfeeling. It won’t exactly parallel Visitor, but this part does to some extent.  
> Disclaimer: _The X-Files_ and all related characters are the property of Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, and Fox Studios. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

Her eyes slide over his appointment on the calendar, but she doesn't need to look to know it's approaching. They have missed every other date they might have held significant - birthdays, anniversaries, days of mourning, days of celebration - but they will keep this appointment. Once a year, when she used to speak to him every day. It is not enough. It is too much. She cannot stand it.

To his credit, he did try to give her an out, but she thought of any other physician trying to riddle their way through his medical history and shook her head. Years of only trusting each other have left them in the impossible bind of being incomprehensible to the rest of the world. Try explaining his overactive brain, his exposure to alien artifacts, his resurrection, to say nothing of the scars she's given him. She's exhausted just thinking about it. 

She is his keeper and she will be until the end of their lives, whatever else happens. It's a promise she to herself made years ago, perhaps the only promise in her life she will keep to her grave. 

He won't go to the doctor if she doesn't do his physical herself. He has been erasing himself for years. A shadow dogged his heels on the day they met, the bright boy exiled from the bright world he'd moved in. The most unwanted, he called himself, drawing the shadow around him. Over the years, she watched it grow to consume him, reaching out long tendrils to drag her thoughts into the darkness. She suggested he see someone, talk to someone. She cajoled. She begged. Mulder has always been possessed of a legendary tenacity; he dug in his heels, his lips drawn in a mutinous line. They had lived with the darkness for so long that it looked like solace to him; the glimmers of light she tried to show him were no more attainable to him than the stars (and the stars held their own terrors, their own shadowy memories). 

When she had done all that she could, when she had talked herself hoarse and held him until her bones ached with the effort, she left. She packed a few of her things and went to her mother's house. Her mother asked no questions, just made her a cup of tea and let her sit at the kitchen table in silence. What could she say to encapsulate the transcendence of her connection to Mulder, to encompass her failure to save him? What could she say to her mother, who still looked at her and saw a lost little girl? 

In the end, like any other two people, she and Mulder have to bear their own burdens. She had thought they were different, that he would never put barriers between them, but when she looks back on their lives together, all she sees are locked doors and their hands pressed to opposite sides of sealed windows and the tails of his trench coat fluttering as he outpaces her. In the dizzying intoxication of his presence, she had forgotten about all the times she reached out to find he was somewhere else entirely, all the times she used her key when she knocked and found him gone and his apartment empty. 

He has always been better at leaving her. She had never managed it before, had never moved to Utah, hadn't been able to stay away from their house in Virginia. This time, she will make it stick, or they will both be lost. If she saves herself, perhaps one day he will accept her hand, reaching down into the hole he has dug for himself, that he calls a shelter. 

The depression is not his fault. She would never blame him for the vagaries of his mind, could never blame him. With all that they've been through, she is surprised that either of them are functional from day to day. They carry their traumas inside them, just under the skin, and sometimes the ache surprises her, like discovering a bruise. He flinches at flashes of light sometimes, and so does she. Her body remembers being scraped hollow. His body would shiver and cry out in the night. In the morning, he would tease her as if nothing was wrong, as if she hadn't clutched him to her as he moaned with fear into the curve of her collarbone. Situation normal. Nothing to see here, Scully. What she couldn't live with, in the end, was his insistence that everything was fine as the world burned down around them. 

She sees a therapist twice a week. It is a long, slow climb out of sorrow. It is more difficult and wearying than almost anything else she has ever done, including her residencies. It is not more difficult than leaving Mulder. But she looks into the mirror each morning and tells herself that she is someone worth saving too. After months of murmuring to herself, she almost believes it. 

Mulder's appointment catches her almost off-guard every time. Three years they've been conducting this ritual. She has seen him in the impersonal exam rooms at the hospital and now in her impersonal office in Quantico. She steels herself for days against the hollow hope in his eyes. She knows (of course she knows) that he wants her to come home. There are days she wants to call him. But then she remembers the way her footsteps echoed in the emptiness of the house. They lived the last year in a museum of curiosities, paper stacked precariously, books collecting dust. The office was the only room in the house that smelled like him. Their new couch would never hold the shape of his body. He closed the door and kept her and the world on the other side, and one day she just couldn't bear it any more. Her constant, her touchstone, locked in an isolation chamber of his own making. 

Before she enters the room, she takes a deep breath, and another. She is stalling and she knows it. Her eyes only slide over him as she walks in; like the sun, he is too brilliant to look at directly, or she risks tears in her eyes, and afterimages wherever she looks. She puts on gloves before she touches him, but she can still feel the warmth of his skin. She is conducting the autopsy of their relationship. It is unbearable. She begins by taking his pulse and his temperature. 

Mulder sits docile on the table she's cleared for him. She mistrusts his stillness. There is something more to it, always. Mulder fidgets by nature, his body channeling the energy his thoughts can't contain. But this quiet makes her task easier. She doesn't have to take his hand to quell the movement of his fingers or brush her hand over his hair to bring him back to earth. She takes his blood pressure and his blood, checks his heart and his lungs. He is healthy and she thanks God for it, silent and automatic. She asks questions and he deflects. That's automatic too, one more ritual they can't discard.

"We should catch up some time," he says. "Go for coffee. My treat."

"I'm a little busy, Mulder," she says, gazing at her tablet. She can't imagine sitting down with him in public, making small talk, sipping overpriced shade-grown fair trade cold brew. They drank thin, burned coffee from gas stations and from the bullpen coffee machine that hadn't been cleaned since the seventies. She can't transpose them in her mind into this updated world. Perhaps that's the problem. "I've got to get recertified in a number of areas. I'm sure you understand."

"Sure," he says. 

"Any other developments in your life?" she asks, her stylus poised to take notes. Professional interest, that's all. 

"I'm seeing a therapist," he offers.

"Good," she says. "I'm glad you have someone to talk to."

Some tendril of hope sprouts within her, and she cannot bear to crush it. She thinks, absurdly, of The Little Prince, which she read as a child curled into her father's side as they looked at the illustrations together. The prince had a rose, and he kept it under a glass dome to protect it from the wildness, the wideness of the universe. She will do the same. When she looks up, Mulder is waiting, for her praise or her dismissal.

She wets her lips with the tip of her tongue, composing herself. "You've been through a lot, Mulder. It's good that you'll have someone who has the right training to help you." Someone who isn't me, she thinks. Someone with the strength to help him hold a mirror up to his anguish, someone who could show him that the shadow wasn't inherent to him. 

"I hope so," he says and she cannot identify his tone. She is out of practice. It is an unexpected thought. 

They're silent for a moment. She peels off her gloves. Her skin never touched his. There are cells of him, atoms of him on the nitrile of the gloves, and she almost hesitates before she throws them into the trash. An old habit, an old fear. No one goes through her trash or bugs her rooms now. He rolls down his shirt and rebuttons the cuff. She scribbles on her screen, categorizing him, coding him, as if he could be captured in a series of data points. 

"I'll walk you out," she says.

"I think I know the way," he tells her. 

"Protocol," she tells him, and she cannot stop her lips from curving up a little at the corners. Sometimes, when they speak, it feels like old times. 

She is steady on her heels, though they are higher than they were in the nineties. She walks tall and he trails along beside her. People nod at her. She remembers when they would have shaken their heads instead, glancing sly and sidelong at Mister and Mrs. Spooky. But no one says a word to Mulder, as if his "visitor" badge has rendered him invisible.

"Don't forget to schedule your colorectal cancer screening," she says. One more reminder that they're getting older. But it comforts her in some way, the mundanity of their medical rituals these days. "I'll have the hospital email you. And I'll call you when my schedule frees up."

She won't. She can see that he knows it. 

"It was good to see you, Mulder." Good is not the word she'd use, if there were any other that suited, but she will not reach out to him. She can't. She created the divide between them, but neither of them is whole enough to bridge it. 

"You too," he says, his eyes already miles away, his busy fingers already peeling off his badge.


	2. Renovation

Her apartment is soulless. She's lived here for more than a year now and it still doesn't feel any more like home than any of the hotels they stayed in when they were just passing through, or the first place she rented, when she had just left him. This place was supposed to be a step up to a more permanent home. She's tried putting books on her new shelves, paintings on her unblemished walls. Nothing makes it feel any cozier. She still wakes up in her bedroom and isn't certain where she is, adrift on her side of the wide bed. 

She misses the warmth of her old apartment, the unsophisticated lines of her furniture. She'd been so proud of it at the time. So much happened in that apartment, but despite the blood she shed, she never felt unsafe. Strange, that her place and Mulder's could feel like sanctuaries despite Duane Barry, despite Tooms and Pfaster, despite bugs and Van Blundht, despite Padgett, despite blood and tears. Mulder's leather couch especially ought to have been suspected, but she had loved it. It had creaked deliciously under her weight, and especially under their combined weight. She had worn her own hollow into his couch, in the hours reading files and batting ideas back and forth in some strange game of ping-pong. 

They had worn hollows into the couch in darker, warmer hours too, during the brief tenure of their bliss before the light took him. Two perfectly serviceable beds between them, but she couldn't resist dragging him down onto the protesting cushions, her fingers curling around his ears, her lips curling against his. 

Her new couch and armchairs are pale, impractical if she had children or dogs (two pangs when she thinks of her children, and a smaller pang when she thinks of Queequeg). The profile of her furniture is clean, modern. It's nothing like the things she had before, or like the furnishings she and Mulder found in antique malls and odd little boutiques. Mulder has a knack for picking furniture. She wouldn't have known before, from his place in Alexandria with the shabby little table and that couch, a shorthand for his rebellious ways. 

She takes to browsing apartment decorating blogs on her breaks. It's a strange, spiraling world of antique drawer pulls and impractical plants and IKEA hacks that involve improbable amounts of spray paint and power tools, but she likes it. She doesn't have much free time, but she can block off a weekend to do something with her bathroom. Scouring the internet for the perfect bathroom takes a month or so. She goes to the hardware store and has them mix together paint for her. Charcoal blue, she thinks, even though that's absurd. But she likes the darkness of it, thinking of the contrast with white tile and her big mirror. She buys a power drill while she's at it, to install her drawer pulls and a new hanger for her towels she bought at Crate & Barrel. 

Home improvement, she thinks. It was never something she really considered. The houses on the naval bases were always temporary quarters; she was never home for long enough to pursue any projects while she worked at the FBI, even if she'd had the inclination. Mulder did a few things around their Virginia house. He was surprisingly handy for a child of luxury, despite his clumsiness in Chicago. But they had both been different people in Virginia, somehow. 

She's surprised every time at the bitter longing that comes with the thought of him. It's hurt and want and anger all bound up together, inextricably interwoven. She knows he wouldn't feel this way if he could see a way around it; she knows he hasn't accepted any guide who might show him a way out of his misery. She is bone-weary from turning the situation over and over in her mind. She cannot see any other ending. They would have worn each other down entirely, given world enough and time. (The poetry in her head is his fault too, as if she could ever really leave him.)

So she paints instead, and tries to make her apartment into a place that she lives and not just a place that she sleeps and eats. 

Dutifully she tapes off the sections of the wall, protecting her tile and her floor and her sink. She lays out her brushes and rollers and ties a kerchief over her hair. She wears the oldest t-shirt and scrubs she can find (not Mulder's Knicks t-shirt - she left that behind, and regrets it now). The lid to the can comes off with a pop as she leans her weight into the key. She stirs the paint with a stick and pours it into the tray. 

Painting is soothing. She rolls the loaded brush along the wall, determined to ignore the flecks of blue-black that flick off the roller. She dabs paint into the corners of the trim where it tries to bubble. She balances precariously on the countertop and the edge of the tub to get the areas above the tile, but there are a few inches she can't reach.

"Mul..." she calls, and falters.

God, they have been extensions of each other's minds and bodies for so long. Like malaria, it is a fever she can never cure. All she can do is wait for the next cold sweat, and try to ride it out, and hope this time isn't the last time. 

She stretches as far as she can, but she can feel herself teetering. She cannot do this herself. She tamps the lid back onto the paint, washes her brushes, rinses her roller. When the paint dries, she takes down the tape and the plastic and showers the flecks of paint off her skin, scrubbing harder than she needs to. Her bathroom feels like something submerged. There is peace in it somehow. The steam from the hot water fogs her mirror and she holds her breath as she clears a space to peer into the smeared reflections of her eyes.

The last stretch of wall is jagged cream above the deep-water dark of her paint. She ignores it as she showers, as she does her makeup, as she gazes into the mirror and wonders where the time went. 

The next weekend she buys a ladder and finishes painting the bathroom. She unscrews the old drawer pulls and finds the stud in the wall to hang her towel rack. When she stands back to look at it all, she's pleased and dissatisfied. Her bathroom feels better, less like a show apartment, but one room does not make a home, and she is too weary to do more. One room has exhausted her. She has rediscovered her limits, the automatic way she reaches out for him when she comes to the end of herself. She cannot face the thought of the rest of the apartment. As mundane as it sounds, she wanted to be picking out cabinet hardware and comparing tile samples with him, one day, when they'd found a place that was truly their own. This place, as it turns out, is just another waystation, a shelter but not a harbor.

She swears to herself, quietly and viciously, and sheds a few hot tears, and then she lifts her head high and goes on with her day.


	3. Invalid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She isn't certain of a diagnosis for not looking right, but she can't lose him.

Her phone buzzes. She looks at the screen. Mulder's name is there, just his last name. It felt too strange to type anything else in. There is no additional identifying information in her contacts book, no group. Just Mulder, marked by the little star that says he's one of her favorites. She misses speed dial, with its less-fraught terminology. He might have been number one on her speed dial, but she didn't have to call him her favorite. 

She slides her finger across the screen, holding her breath.

"Scully," she says, keeping her voice as steady as a scalpel.

"Sorry," he says in a hoarse voice, and for a moment her heart drops. "I'm sick."

"What are your symptoms, Mulder?" she asks. She reaches for a pen and paper, both printed with pharmaceutical logos. 

"Hot," he says, and she writes down "possibly febrile". "I hurt. I don't look right. I don't feel right." She writes down "body aches" and then stops, her pen scratching to a halt. She isn't certain of a diagnosis for not looking right, but she can't lose him. 

"I'll be right there," she says, her mouth dry. "Just lie down." She wishes, for a moment, that she were still in practice. The supplies she has at the office won't help her much with diagnosing him. But there should still be a thermometer in the bathroom at the house, and bandages, and a selection of NSAIDs and other stopgaps. She walks briskly to the car, pointedly not hurrying too much, though the only witness is herself. She takes a deep breath before she turns the key in the ignition. 

She's lost in her thoughts as she drives, but she's done the route so many times it's as if the car knows its way home. She runs through the catalogue of maladies in her mind. Mulder, for all his foibles, has rarely been sick since she's known him. Injured, certainly, and poisoned and drugged and God knows what else, but not sick. Maybe dying changed him, altered his immune system. Maybe he's dying again, slipping into a slow oblivion as some alien retrovirus dismantles him cell by cell. 

Her key doesn't even fumble in the lock. She picks the right one the first time, without even looking, and some small part of her is relieved to be home as she steps in and shrugs her coat off, hanging it automatically on the coat tree. The lights are mostly off, but she can see the shape of him on the couch, bundled under a blanket. He stirs a little at the sound of her footsteps, but doesn't rouse. Her heart tugs in her chest. God, she misses him; it always hits her hardest in these odd weary moments that are already emotionally fraught. She crosses the room to him, kneels down, touches the backs of her fingers to his forehead. She read somewhere once that touching a person with the backs of the fingers signifies intimacy and caring, but it's habit for her, with him. A lot of things she does don't mean what they used to. 

"Sorry," he says, and she has to swallow against the sudden thickness in her throat.

"You don't have to be sorry," she tells him. He's definitely got a fever. He looks sweaty and a little bit pale, but not outside the range of normal illness. Nothing alien, nothing impossible. He'll be all right. She breathes out, careful not to sigh. "Mulder, you're burning up."

"Am I dying?" he asks.

"No," she says. "No, Mulder. I think you have the flu."

"You might not know," he says, his voice still raspy. 

"I'll do a flu test," she says, a little amused and a little irritated that he always assumes he knows better than she does, "but you look pretty textbook to me." Now that she isn't immediately afraid that he's dying, she almost wishes he hadn't called. The flu is something he should certainly treat, but he could have gotten care at any clinic. She's glad he didn't try to drive himself somewhere in his current state, but vexed that this is going to be her next few days, nursing Mulder back to some semblance of health. He never needs her help until he absolutely needs her help. The proverb about an ounce of prevention never stuck with Mulder. 

Well. She's still his doctor. He's still her patient. She can start by getting his fever down a bit. In the kitchen, in the usual place, she finds the bottle of acetaminophen. He hasn't moved anything. She fills a glass with water and brings him three tablets. His hands shake as he takes the water and she keeps her fingers wrapped around the glass to steady it as he slurps. In her head, she makes a list of the things she needs to do before she comes back. He collapses back onto the pillow, looking exhausted. 

"Mulder, I'll be back in a little while. Just try to sleep, and drink your water."

"Scully," he says into his pillow. She rests her hand on his bare foot. His skin is hot and smooth and a little dry. There's a sock crumpled next to the couch. She imagines him kicking it off, restless and frustrated. 

"I need to make arrangements for my class this afternoon, and I need clothes, and I need to pick up a few things from the pharmacy."

"Sorry," he says, and she thinks it's the word she's heard most from him since he called. She misses the days when her name was the sound he spoke most often. 

"It's all right," she says. "Just sleep."

He nestles into his pillow, but there's a frown snagged between his eyebrows, and it doesn't smooth out for several minutes. She stays until she's certain he's asleep, and then she goes to arrange her day. She's thankful that Skinner understands the situation. It would be difficult to explain Mulder to anyone else. Ex-husband doesn't suit him; they're not divorced. Separated is true, but doesn't explain why she'd take the time to force medication on him at regular intervals. Partner isn't accurate at this point. But Skinner understands, and makes certain her schedule is clear, and authorizes her choice of substitute for her classes. 

"Thank you," he says.

"Why?" she asks.

"I'm sure this isn't the easiest thing for you to be doing," Skinner tells her. "But all things considered, I'd rather he be okay."

"Yeah," she says. "Me too." 

She picks up her overnight bag, always packed, and a few changes of clothes, and then gets a box of Theraflu packets at the pharmacy, talking the tech into selling her a flu test kit. Driving back to him feels inevitable. He is still asleep when she unlocks the door, and she wakes him, brushing her fingers over his blanketed shoulder.

"Open your mouth," she says, and dips a cotton swab into his mouth. He swallows in protest. "That's going to tell me that you have the flu. Normal, human, terrestrial flu. Did you get your vaccine?"

He shakes his head wearily, rubbing his face against the pillow. 

"Next time, I'll order them in advance and give them to you myself," she says. All he has to do is ask. All he has ever had to do is ask. They are prisoners of their own habits. At least she can give him some relief. 

She stands up and walks back into the kitchen, taking the flu kit with her. She finds the tea kettle in the cupboard - theoretically, she could microwave the water, but she'd rather boil it on the stove. She presses in the knob and turns it, waiting for the familiar click and fwoosh of the gas. 

"That explains where my tea kettle went," she says, loud enough for him to hear. 

"Never went anywhere," he says into his pillow, the words muffled. 

The flu test kit sits on the counter. While she waits for the results and the rattle of the kettle, she checks the fridge and the cupboards. He has food enough for two, for a few days at least. A lot of pre-made things, but better than he used to eat. She checks the test: it's a clear positive, and she sighs with relief, her shoulders releasing from a tension she hadn't even noticed. She can deal with the flu. Mulder, relatively healthy, isn't likely to die of the flu. When the water boils, she mixes up a dose of the Theraflu and makes herself a cup of peppermint tea. She sets the mug of medicine in front of Mulder. He blinks blearily at it, clearly disappointed that the minty mug isn't his. 

"Let that cool down," she tells him, and goes to the bookshelf. He has consolidated her things onto one shelf, it looks like. She touches the spines of the various volumes and picks up _Breakfast At Tiffany's_. It's been years since she read it. She half-remembers reading it on a night that Mulder kept calling her, and how finally she set it down to go after him. Not tonight. She kicks off her shoes and curls up in the big chair in the corner, setting her tea on the side table they bought together in a little antique mall. 

"What's happening?" he asks.

"Mulder, I'm not going to leave you alone," she says in an even voice. "You have the flu. You need someone to take care of you for a few days." 

"No, it's okay," he says, struggling to sit up. 

"It's not a problem," she says, and it isn't a lie, although it isn't quite the truth. "You're just lucky your doctor still makes house calls." 

She reads. He falls asleep again. She finishes her tea and goes upstairs to strip the bed. If she's staying, she's going to be comfortable. Mulder has always prefered the couch in moments of stress, and she isn't certain he could handle the stairs. The sheets are bulky in her arms, and the pillowcases smell like his skin. She carries them downstairs to put in the wash and nudges Mulder awake on her way to the laundry room. His medicine is on the edge of being too cold to be palatable, and she makes him drink it down. 

"You're staying?" he asks, staring blearily at the sheets.

"You're sick," she says. "Just rest."

He lies back down and she takes the sheets to the washer, measures out detergent, sets it running on a hot cycle. There are other sheets, but these have always been her favorites, and she doesn't know how long the others have been resting in the closet. She reads and makes more tea while Mulder naps, and by the time the sheets are dry and the bed is made, he's awake enough to actually talk to her.

"Could you eat some soup?" she asks.

He frowns boyishly. "Do I have to?"

"I'll go and make you some," she says. "It would be good if you could get some calories into you."

"I can do it," he says. "If you just leave me the soup and the medicine. I can take care of myself."

She doesn't say anything. It's patently clear that he's unable to do much of anything for himself right now. She goes into the kitchen and opens a can of soup, the kind with the pull ring on the top. Bachelor convenience, she thinks, but better than some of what he used to eat. She microwaves the soup in a mug. It seems easier.

"What are you going to eat?" he asks. 

"I'll find something," she says. She hasn't eaten much, but she isn't particularly hungry, and nothing in his pantry tempted her. She watches him slurp at his soup, pretending to read her book. He manages to swallow it all and then reaches for an article from the table, but it's clear he can concentrate on it. Some of the things he reads make little enough sense in one's right mind, she thinks, much less when one is sick. He throws the article back onto the heap and flops down on his pillow again.

"Read to me," he says. 

"Mulder, I'm not going to read to you," she tells him, but for a second she thinks of Florida, the weight of him in her lap as he insisted she sing to him. 

"I can't sleep," he whines, and she tamps down her irritation along with the wash of compassion.

"Do you want the tv?" she asks.

"I want you to read to me." 

She gazes at him for a moment and then down at the page. Giving in to Mulder has always been easy. "'"Oh, you get used to anything," I said, annoyed with myself, for actually I was proud of the place'," she begins, and keeps on. 

He isn't really listening, she thinks, just drifting in and out, but she reads to him all the same, page after page. It soothes her too somehow, as if she's listening to herself on tape. 

When he's drowsing again, she gives him a second dose of medicine and covers him with a blanket. 

"I'd put you to bed, but it will be easier for you down here," she tells him, and turns to leave the room. 

In a rough whisper he asks her, "Do you think about coming home?"

She pauses at the bottom of the stairs. His words rasp through her, sticking like a dull blade in the cartilage between her ribs. "I think about you," she says. "I think about us. i But I don't say it anymore. I don't want to hurt you."

She changes into her pajamas and brushes her teeth. He's changed brands of toothpaste, but her toothbrush is still there. The clean sheets crackle against her skin as she slides between the covers and she sleeps soundly, curled up on her side of the bed. In the morning, she takes his temperature and feeds him orange juice and toast. She showers, dresses, and goes out to teach a class in the middle of the day, dosing him first so he'll sleep rather than try to prove he doesn't need her. 

She's distracted during class and loses her place in her notes. Her students are patient today and she wonders what they were told, if anything. Rumor has always spread quickly. This time around, she's not part of most of it, which has been refreshing, but it won't be surprising if a bunch of young people training to be investigators want to dig into her past. Peace was never meant to last, she thinks, and wonders when she learned that lesson.

She gathers her things and leaves as quickly as she can, stopping by Mulder's favorite deli and her favorite bookstore. The clerk helps her find something long but not too difficult to follow. She makes her way back to the house and reheats the soup before waking Mulder. 

" _Watership Down_ ," she says, slipping the first CD of the book into the cd player. "Although apparently it isn't about ships." This time they eat together, him on his couch, her in her chair, listening to the book. The soup fills some hollow place inside her, or maybe it's the company. She can't help thinking of the diners and motels and restaurants they've eaten together in, not to mention the meals they shared in this house, or in his apartment or hers. She's probably broken more bread with Mulder than with anyone else in her life. There's something peaceful to it. She dips the crusts of her sandwich in the last of the broth from her soup. Mulder grumbles gently about not getting a sandwich and she ignores him. 

The story she's chosen is strangely compelling, despite the fact that it's about rabbits. She watches Mulder out of the corner of her eye, but even his hands are relaxed on top of the blanket. She nestles deeper into the chair. None of the furniture in her apartment is as comfortable as this chair is. It knows the shape of her body already. It's had years to fit itself to her. She feels the same way about dating. They have an agreement of sorts. She might go on dates if she wanted. But it's so wearying to think about, to imagine trying to get to know anyone else. Mulder already knows her, better than anyone else ever could. Of course she wants to come home. 

She stays for the better part of a week, driving back to teach class and see her therapist, who frowns when Scully tells her she's taking care of Mulder.

"He's my patient," she says, "and I'm his doctor."

"It doesn't seem healthy," her therapist starts, but Scully interrupts her.

"He isn't physically healthy," she says. "I'll leave when he is." She refuses to talk about it any more, and after a few minutes her therapist gives up and asks her about her brothers instead.

One of the days is Mulder's birthday; she goes to his favorite bakery and back to the bookstore and brings him a black and white cookie and a book about string theory. She writes "Happy birthday" inside the front cover and hesitates before signing it "Dana". So strange, to use her name with him. He puts it under his pillow, too weary to read it, but she's touched that he keeps it close. 

Every night she takes his temperature and then climbs the stairs to their bedroom. She tries to sprawl, to take up the whole bed, but wakes up every morning curled onto her side, leaving space for him. It terrifies her how easy it is to come back, to feel like she's come home. She knows they have changed each other, but she feels like she has lost more than he has. Mulder's life was an odd mix of aimless focus before she walked into their office, and it's the same odd mix now. Meanwhile, she struggles to piece together what she wants, and to define herself and her role when she isn't defending him. She has never had a quest that was hers alone. She never wanted one. But she feels strange without his work - their work - shaping her life, like the Knights of the Round Table when Arthur was gone. On the other hand, everything in the house reminds her of the fights they had at the end. She will never be more important than the work. She can't live that way anymore, waiting for the phone to ring, wondering if it will be him or the hospital, whether he will be found dead or alive. 

By the end of the week, he's recovered enough to totter around the house by himself. She's pleased; he was an awkward weight to shoulder to the bathroom. She makes sure that his kitchen is stocked with convenient food and prepares herself to go back to her real life, in her own apartment, with her own bed and her partnerless toothbrush.

"Scully," he says as she's packing her things. She wanders through the kitchen and glances at the tea kettle. She could take it - he isn't likely to use it much - but she has a sleek new electric kettle. She can leave him this much of herself. It would be too much of a reminder, the old kettle in her new place. 

"Hmm?" she says. "This bread will go moldy if you don't keep it in the fridge."

"Thanks," he says, crossing his arms and leaning against the counter. "For taking care of me."

"It would be unethical not to care for my patient," she says, and sees the hurt in his eyes. She sighs.

"I do care, Mulder," she says, keeping her distance. "I just can't be with you right now. I can't live in the darkness all of the time. There has to be some kind of respite. And I can't be your only light. I want you to get better. If I stay, then nothing ever changes. We just play the same roles and fight the same fights and both of us deserve more than that."

He sags a little, and her heart wants to melt, but she turns away. 

"I'll call you to see how you're feeling in a few days," she says. She means it. Mulder makes an excellent test subject; she isn't the only one who's thought that through the years. She has a professional interest in his health aside from the personal. 

"Take your vitamins," she tells him, shouldering her bag.

The door closes behind her with a sound like a coffin lid. She trots down the steps and drives away, because there's nothing else she can do.


	4. Motion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now she sets her own pace, knows her own capabilities.

Her life has settled into an easy routine without Mulder to drag her halfway across the country on a whim. She goes with her mother to Sunday mass, and tries not to fidget through the service. She doesn't take Communion and her mother doesn't ask. Scully is grateful for that. God may have grace enough to comprehend the ebb and flow of her faith and of her practice, but she does not. Every time she steps into the church, she thinks of her cancer, of Emily, of angels, of William's baptism. 

She is lucky that her faith has always been a solitary thing. There are no institutions left that she can believe in, not after government conspiracies and doctors doing harm, after revelations and separations. She thinks, absurdly, of reading _Good Night, Moon_ to William: good night, democracy, and good night, marriage, good night, medicine, and good night, clerics. 

The rosary slips through her fingers with practiced ease, when she remembers to pray. She has nothing to confess to any priest. 

Now that she's mostly teaching (and thinking always of William, of how she left the field for the classroom so that she could spend time with her son), she has time to herself. She gets up at five every morning and goes for a run, fueled only by coffee and the desire to be a leaner, cleaner version of herself. Maybe it's some kind of penance, the only kind she can accept. No one can scrub away her sins but herself. If she strips herself down to her essential components, there will be nothing for anyone to catch hold of. If she fills her day, there will be no place for anyone to wedge themselves into her life.

She doesn't wear headphones (too many crime scene reports starting with an oblivious victim, and whatever multitudes she may contain, she is a physically small woman who's had enough reminders of her relative weakness in her lifetime). She takes her phone, a bottle of water, and the ID bracelet that her mother bought her, because her mother will never stop worrying. She laces up her sneakers and wears herself out, remembering runs with Mulder, remembering the first time he offered to run with her, that first night in Oregon. Her first partner, looking like a college student in his sweats and his baseball cap, his eyes gleaming with that adrenaline high. She hadn't known the boundaries then, hadn't known that Mulder would let down all his walls and build them back up again. 

When she started running with Mulder, years later, she thought it would be different: pounding the pavement, rattling her joints, her heart thudding and her breath rasping. She wanted that, to some extent. The reality of running is different. She breathes hard, but evenly. Between the cushion in her shoes and the way she holds her body, there's very little jarring, though her knees ache sometimes. But there's still something pure about it. She feels like she has gained something afterwards, and like she has rid herself of something, as if the accumulated sins of her life could be sweated out. 

She runs in the dark, and knows herself to be a fearsome thing slipping through the shadows, though she knows better than most what other terrors the dark might hold. She runs in the rain, the end of her ponytail slapping against her shoulder. She runs in the snow and loves every second of it, even though snowflakes catch and blur in her eyelashes, even though the footing becomes uncertain and her thighs brace instinctively. She feels strong and brave and alone when she runs, listening to the huff of her breath and the skritch of her shoes on the pavement.

Sometimes she goes running after therapy. Only motion seems to quiet the restlessness inside her. She has put away her feelings and her traumas into small boxes for so many years, the way her mother stored mementos in the attic, and now her therapist demands that she go through all of them.

"Why do you call him Mulder?" her therapist asks, and Scully misses Karen Kossoff, who recommended this one, at least. Her therapist is a perfectly nice woman of Indian descent who goes by Doctor G, claiming that her last name is unpronounceable for most Americans. She seems perfectly competent, and Scully finds her office soothing. Doctor G keeps a shrine to Ganesh in the corner, with a candy dish in front of it that Scully thinks is a private joke from the way the office assistant dips into it so freely, and the scent of camphor lingers. 

"I've always called him Mulder," Scully tells her.

"Always doesn't have to be always," Doctor G says. "Things can change between you. It isn't as if you haven't known each other long enough to be on a first-name basis. And you've had a child together."

"He didn't like to be called Fox," Scully says. "He doesn't like to be called Fox."

"It seems to me that calling each other by your last names puts some emotional distance between you," her therapist says. "I'd like to shorten that distance, if possible, if only in this room. I think it would make it easier for you to discuss some of the things that have happened."

"I don't think calling him Fox will change anything," Scully says, feeling foolish. His name feels strange in her mouth, like talking about her high school crushes. She was always afraid that somehow they would hear, that they would know from the way she said their names.

"Humor me," says Doctor G, smiling. 

Scully sighs. "What was the question?"

"What would you like your relationship with Fox to look like?" Doctor G asks. "In an ideal world."

"In an ideal world?" Scully asks. She's stalling, as if she hasn't considered the matter a hundred times. "In an ideal world, we'd be together, I suppose, raising our son. A family." 

"'Together' is a word that can mean a lot of things," Doctor G says gently, and lets the silence stretch out.

Scully crosses her arms. "'Family' is a word that can mean a lot of things."

"That's true," Doctor G allows, "but what do you want it to mean?"

"Mul...Fox isn't necessarily in a place where he can give me what I want," Scully says.

"Even in your ideal world?" Doctor G asks.

"I can't ignore the reality of the situation," Scully says. "I can't create some kind of fantasy Mulder - Fox - and erase the parts of him that are inconvenient."

"Interesting," Doctor G says, making a note in her notebook. Scully wonders if it's required of therapists to look cryptic and handwrite notes. She wonders if Doctor G is making a grocery list - cilantro, chicken thighs, pistachios. She wonders if she looks paranoid, gazing at the notebook as if she could see through the cover and read what Doctor G has written about her. 

"I love him," Scully says, and can't remember if she's ever said that out loud to someone else. "Not just his passion or his incredible mind, but all of him. I can't subtract anything from him and still have the Fox I fell in love with. And that means dealing with the darkness inside him."

"Hmm," Doctor G says, writing again. "That's an interesting perspective, Dana." 

Scully looks out the window. The sky is grey. A breeze ruffles the few leaves left on a tree outside. She wiggles her toes inside her shoes, longing for her sneakers and the solid feel of the pavement pushing back against her feet. "Interesting in what way?" she says at last.

"Well, it's either very healthy or very enabling," Doctor G says. "You've told me he struggles with depression."

"Yes," Scully says, curling her hands in her lap. "We've both been through a remarkable amount of trauma."

"You say you want to deal with the darkness, but the fact is that you left," Doctor G says.

"There is a difference," Scully says slowly, "between dealing with darkness and drowning in it. Mulder - Fox - didn't want my help. He wouldn't accept that he needed to talk to me or anyone else. He wouldn't admit that there was anything wrong. I left because I had to."

"You had to?" Doctor G prompts.

"I've been in that darkness before," Scully says, her fingers flexing in her lap. "There comes a time when you can't believe there's any good left in the world. I couldn't live that way again. The healthiest thing I could do, for myself and for Fox, was to be strong enough to leave, so he would know there was a way out." She pauses, gathering her thoughts. "I've always been there for him. Even now. I don't think he can see that, but I've never been out of reach." 

Doctor G checks her watch. "Dana, our time is up." She smiles. "It always gets so interesting in the last ten minutes or so. I'll see you on Thursday."

"See you on Thursday," Scully echoes, gathering her things.

She goes home and changes into tights and a sports bra, zips up her shell and laces up her sneakers. She runs, breath turning to steam in the chilly air, and wonders if she'll ever outpace the shadows that dog her steps, if she and Mulder could ever outrun them together. She sprints until her heart is pounding, but it doesn't quiet the ache in her chest. At least when she wipes her face, she can't tell the difference between sweat and tears. 

She lopes home at an easy pace, thinking of other runs with Mulder beside her cracking jokes, his long stride shortened for her convenience. They made it work for so many years, adjusting to each other automatically. They urged each other along when neither of them believed they had the strength. Now she sets her own pace, knows her own capabilities. She pushes on, alone, through the gathering dusk, to a home that isn't home, to a life that barely seems like hers. But she’ll keep going through the motions until they have meaning. She’ll keep living her routine until it becomes reality, just as she always has.


	5. Thanksgiving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scully goes to her mother's for Thanksgiving, just as she does every year.

Scully goes to her mother's for Thanksgiving, just as she does every year now that she's no longer on the run. It's one of the few times she sees the rest of her family. She remembers when her family was her solace, when Missy and her father were alive. Now Bill is the Man of the Family, and she is the awkward little sister who can't manage to get herself married off or promoted high enough for her brother to accept she's married to her work (Navy men are always married to their ships, after all, and Tara has always smiled placidly through the jokes).

She has things to be thankful for: her health (and Mulder's), her job, her dull but comfortable apartment, the fact that she has any family left. But she resents being told to be thankful for them. She resents the implication that she should not mourn the things she has lost (her children, her faith, her partner). She resents the smug way that Bill says grace, as if he believes that he alone is responsible for all the goodness in his life. As if he believes that she could achieve this too, if only she would act right.

But she loves to see her mother going through the holiday traditions. She loves, improbably, green bean casserole, and she will never make it for herself. She loves the warm satiation afterward, slouching on the couch with Maggie's arm around her, talking about nothing, so she packs herself and a selection of bakery pies into her car and makes the drive. The flicker of rebellion that made her sneak cigarettes to smoke in the dim of the porch still glints in her eyes when she glimpses herself in the rearview mirror, but she has long years of practice keeping her feelings off her face. The enigmatic Agent Scully, she thinks, parking in her mother's driveway, jerking the parking brake with just a little more force than necessary.

Bill is Bill and Tara is Tara and they will never really understand her, but Tara hugs her warmly all the same. Matthew is gawky, but he smiles when he sees his Aunt Dana, and so do Amelia and Luke, though they're still a little shyer than their brother. Aunt Dana wasn't always around when they were small, after all. Fugitive flight didn't lend itself well to family reunions. (Scully remembers the first time she heard her niece's name; it was hard to hide her flinch. Tara noticed, and apologized later, but it was her grandmother's name, and she'd had her heart set on calling her daughter Amelia since she was a little girl. Scully said she understood, of course, but she still feels that twinge when she half-hears Tara calling, and that bubble of hope rises and pops.) Charlie is there too, bearded and hearty. 

"You surviving, big sis?" he asks in a quiet moment.

Scully floats a hand at the base of her throat, indicating the water level. "You?"

"All good," he says, grinning. "Shipshape and Bristol fashion." 

She is thankful for Charlie. In his years away, he outgrew his hero worship for Bill, outgrew being the baby of the family. They aren't close, but she knows he would be there if she needed him. They are friends in a way she's never been able to manage with Bill. Impulsively she steps into his arms for a hug. 

"Don't let the bastards get you down," he says.

"I won't," she promises.

It takes an hour or so for everything to be done, for the wine to breathe, for the turkey to rest. Tara bustles around comfortably, as if Maggie's house is her own, though it isn't like the base housing at all. Scully lingers in the doorway. She's competent in the kitchen, but not at home in it. Maybe she should feel differently about letting Tara fulfill all the responsibilities she might have had if she had taken a different path in life, settled down with one of her brother's Navy friends, and had children, but she's so far from the possibility of that life that the voice in her head is only a whisper. 

Finally Maggie calls them all to the table. There's an empty place set at the head of the table in memory of Melissa and William Scully, as there has been for the last few decades, but there's an empty place next to Scully too. She looks at her mother questioningly.

"Mom, are we missing someone?" She hopes, a twinge of guilt twanging in her chest, that it isn't their priest again.

"I invited Fox," Maggie says with a cheerful calmness. 

Guilt twangs again. 

"Is he coming?" Scully asks, setting down her wine before the tremble of her fingers betrays her. Bill glares at her.

"I don't think so," Maggie tells her. Bill's glower brightens slightly.

"That's a shame," Charlie says. "I was looking forward to meeting him. I've heard so much about this Mulder of yours, Dana."

"You're not missing much," Bill says, and Tara puts her hand on his arm.

"Now, Bill," she says, "this isn't the day for that." As if any other day of the year (with possible exceptions: Christmas, Easter, Your Wayward Little Sister's Loser Partner Day) his disdain would be reasonable. Scully frowns, resentful of Mulder and defensive of him all at once, and resentful of the fact that her expression coordinates perfectly with Bill's.

"Who's Fox?" Luke asks. 

"Nobody important," Bill says, just as Scully says, "My partner," and they glare at each other. 

"He's a friend of Aunt Dana's," Charlie says, leaning over to scruff Luke's hair. "You'll get to meet him one day."

"A grownup named Fox?" Amelia says dubiously. Bill laughs and it's a nasty sound. Scully is almost certain that if she stares at him for long enough, he'll catch fire. She will not fight her brother on Thanksgiving, she says to herself like a mantra. She will not let him win.

"Well, I'm starving," Charlie says. "Mom, will you say grace?"

"Let your brother do it," Maggie says, smiling at Bill. 

Bill obliges with a prayer that sounds smug to Scully's ears, but Bill has never let himself see anything that would cause him to question his faith. Of course he speaks to God as if he expects God to listen. 

"Amen," she says with the rest of them.

Bill and Tara make small talk with Charlie about his work, and it's clear they don't know the first thing about programming. Bill proclaims proudly that he barely texts. Scully eats the food and drinks her wine and doesn't mention the extensive computer hardware on modern ships. Amelia tears her roll into tiny pieces and stares alternately at her Uncle Charlie and Aunt Dana. Luke glops more mashed potatoes onto his plate.

"Aunt Dana, is it true that you cut up dead people?" Amelia asks, having apparently made up her mind.

"Yes," Scully says, "that's true, although it's not the whole story."

"Coooool," Luke says. "Can I come to work with you sometime?"

"I don't think so," she says gently. "I work at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They don't allow a lot of visitors."

"Aunt Dana is a policewoman," Tara says.

"Aunt Dana is a federal agent," Charlie corrects. "Special Agent."

"Whoa," Luke says, and even Matthew looks impressed. 

"Special Agent, M.D.," Scully says, and Charlie winks at her. 

"That's right," he says, pointing his fork at Luke. "They don't let just anybody cut up dead people. You gotta get your degree."

"I'm making the Navy pay for my college," Matthew says, sounding too much like Bill for Scully's taste. She reaches for the green bean casserole. 

"That's my boy," Bill says, beaming. 

Scully tries not to sigh. She remembers the point in her life when she thought she wanted this, almost this exact scenario: the family, the dinner, the comfortable assurance that life was under control. She can't remember the moment that she realized that anything like this was a dream she would never achieve, and not just because of the fertility stolen from her. She has seen too much to luxuriate in confidence like Bill. There are forces working in this world for good and for evil, and they look too much alike for her comfort. Even if Mulder were sitting next to her, his knee bumping hers under the table, even if William were here wrestling with his cousins for the first piece of pie, she would not have the life she dreamt of when she was a girl. She is too old to believe in happily ever after (though she still wants to believe, after a fashion).

After the meal, she helps her mother pack leftovers into a new set of Tupperware. It's for Mulder; she knows without asking, but she and Maggie both pretend that the boxes will just go into the fridge.

"I wish Fox had been able to come," Maggie says.

"I wish you hadn't invited him without asking me," Scully mumbles, feeling like a teenager. 

"Fox is family," Maggie tells her placidly.

"I'm not denying that," Scully says. "I just wish you had asked."

"What would you have said?" Maggie asks.

"I would have said yes," Scully says, not sure if she's lying or not. 

"Fox stood by me when I thought you were gone forever," Maggie says. "I'm just doing the same for him."

"I'm not gone," Scully says, and falters.

Maggie reaches out and squeezes Scully's hand. "I'm not blaming you, Dana. But he needs someone in his life."

Scully sighs. "I'm not denying that either."

"Will you take these to him?" Maggie asks.

"I have a lot of paperwork," Scully says, sidestepping the question.

"All right, Dana," Maggie says. "Thank you for coming. It's always so good to see you. We had a nice time, didn't we?"

"Yeah, we did." Scully leans against her mother. Guilt thrums in her ears and leaves a sour taste in her mouth that she'll have to wash out with the rest of the wine when she gets home. There's no question in her mind about where the steel in her soul comes from. The Scully women may seem implacable, but they've always been immovable objects, even Melissa in all her whimsy. "I love you, Mom."

"I love you too, Dana," Maggie says.

When she gets home and uncorks the wine and unpacks the leftovers, she discovers her mother has given her an extra container of green bean casserole. She puts it in her fridge next to the bags of salad greens and tubs of pre-cut vegetables, and remembers another Thanksgiving, Mulder standing in front of the mini-fridge in their extended stay hotel in the middle of the night, dipping into a can of cranberry sauce and then kissing her with tart lips. She was thankful then, for so many things. 

She closes the fridge and goes to run a bath to go with her wine, thankful for her solitude and missing him all at once. 

She thinks about calling him as she's crawling into her lonely bed, warm from the bath and gently woozy from the wine, but she can't think of anything to say. She sleeps instead, the phone on the pillow next to her, her thumb resting on the dark screen, and she dreams of investigating the smell of cinnamon, which turns out to be the waft of Mulder's skin. She wakes up confused and bereft at 2 a.m., turns over and falls asleep again and remembers nothing. 

The day after Thanksgiving, she gets up and runs, as usual, then showers and dresses for work. Crime, as her instructors would have reminded her, doesn't sleep. Traffic is lighter than usual and she has time to stop for coffee. On a whim, she orders a cinnamon swirl latte and doesn't know why her heart aches just a little. For lunch, she eats leftovers and thinks of Mulder doing the same, alone in their house, warmed by her mother's love. 

Next year, she thinks. Maybe next year, the empty places at her table and in her heart will be filled.


	6. Presence

She tries to go on dates. She really does. Her therapist encourages her, in that way that therapists have. It's the tone of "I can't tell you what to do with your life, but this is what you need to do" that Scully resents; it's like going through adolescence all over again. She's too used to her autonomy. Between her now-encyclopedic knowledge of cryptids and conspiracy, her medical degree, and her badge, she's been accustomed to being the authority in most situations for more than two decades. Now she sits in a room and lets someone else tell her how inscrutable her life has been, as if she lacks perspective, as if she has not seen the smallness of her world through others' eyes before.

"Dating," she echoes, sitting in the engineered comfort of her therapist's office. 

"Dating," Doctor G confirms. "Just something we're talking about. How does the thought make you feel?"

Scully sighs and looks at her lap. "Tense."

Doctor G nods. "Can you tell me more?"

"It's not something I've even considered," Scully says. "I've had too many other things on my mind."

"You and Fox aren't married," Doctor G says calmly as Scully twists her fingers together. 

"No," she says, "We only had an understanding."

"Do you want to move on with your life, Dana?" Doctor G asks.

Scully hesitates. "I don't want to be stuck in this holding pattern," she says finally. 

Doctor G shrugs. "I certainly can't tell you what to do," she says, "but in your position, I might try seeing other people. You've changed so many other things in your life. If you still feel that sense of stasis, this might be the way to shift your perspective." 

"I'm too old to be dating," Scully says, feeling every minute of her age. She tucks her hair behind her ear. "The last time I was interested in dating, beepers were modern technology."

Doctor G laughs. 

Scully thinks about it as she drives home. She was 28 when she met Mulder, old enough to know better, with several adult relationships under her belt, and not all of them disastrous. And yet Mulder changed everything, left her dizzy as a teenager, took her breath away with a kiss, all of it. All of the things she'd half-given up on having, Mulder gave her (most of it in his own particular way, but all the same: a child, a home, a loving partner, a life together even if so much of it was spent in transit). Mulder was her north star, her fixed point, and she knew absolutely that she was his, until she wasn't. Until he chose the darkness instead. She remembered then that no matter how close the stars look, they are separated by vast empty space, by a void beyond dimension, and that even light takes centuries to bridge the gap. 

Still she looks up at the hazy winter sky and is comforted. The stars may not be as close as they seem, but they pin back the dark night after night. She remembers the weight of her Apollo 11 keychain, its heft and its promise. No one gets there alone. Millions of miles and hundreds of years haven't dimmed the glints she sees of the universe that was. She can never be alone as long as there are stars; they're made of the same stuff, after all, she and stars, she and Mulder, variations on a universal theme. 

Maybe it's that mid-holiday spirit, that hope that things will still be magical, but for a few blocks, she wants to believe someone else could sweep her off her feet. 

She's too fastidious or too proud or too something to sign up for a dating site or any kind of app, but she stops looking away when men try to catch her eye, and two or three invite her to dinner. She dutifully dresses up and goes out, drinks wine, picks at her meals. It's difficult to make conversation. She has no pat responses to the usual round of questions: has she ever shot anyone, what's the strangest injury she's ever seen, does she believe in Bigfoot, does she have any children. She used to have answers to all of these questions, but she's forgotten her lines, out of the spotlight too long. Once there's a woman, and it's mostly an accident. She doesn't realize that she was being asked for Drinks-with-a-capital-D until she gets to the bar and sees that she's underdressed. 

"I'm sorry," she says. "I'm not sure how I missed that particular nuance."

"It's fine," the other woman - Robin - says valiantly. "Happens all the time. My last girlfriend used to tell me I didn't look the part."

"Is there a dress code?" Scully asks.

"Apparently," Robin says with a wry smile. 

"I haven't been on a real date since the mid-nineties," Scully says, trying to salvage the situation. "It's all new to me all over again. I'm...flattered." She puts her hand on the bar, lets her fingertips graze Robin's in a way that she hopes seems friendly. "At least let me buy you a drink to make up for misunderstanding."

"You're on," Robin, and her smile this time is genuine and surprisingly lovely. 

It's one of the more pleasant experiences, honestly, and the evening ends with a warm clasp of hands and a kiss on the cheek. Scully thinks about it as she brushes her teeth and washes her face. She might have asked for a second date, if she thought she was willing to follow through, but that wouldn't be fair to Robin. Women are an option she'd never really considered; she supposes there's little reason not to these days, but the whole idea of dating anyone exhausts her. She hasn't asked any of the men she's been out with for second dates either, for exactly the same reasons. She's weary of small talk, hates the professed profundity of all the getting-to-know-you questions. The person she wants is the person who knows her inside and out, the person whose silence has always felt more eloquent and comforting than any words. 

She leans against the sink, the porcelain cool under her palms. Her heart thuds. She stares into her reflection, and is startled by the exhaustion in her own eyes. She wants Mulder. They wore each other down over the years and built each other back up until they only fit together, like a key in a lock or two shattered shards of some improbable artifact. There must be some universal constant to describe their relationship, some equation to calculate the variables that have driven a wedge between them.

There are too many years between her and her studies to parse their slapdash humanity into comprehensible data. Like the distance between the stars, it will take time to illuminate. All she knows is that she and Mulder are greater than the sum of their parts. She doesn't have another twenty years to spend reforging herself. She would rather be alone than abandon the person she's become.

She goes to sleep in her empty bed. The twinkle of Christmas lights outside is warmer and closer than stars, more human, and she remembers that the winter solstice is the balance point of the year, and that soon they will be halfway out of the dark. She will wake up one day in a brighter world, if only she can keep her feet under her a few more weeks. 

Things are better in the morning. She can't remember why she felt so rudderless, but there are days that gravity suspends itself and times goes lost. It's the holidays, maybe; the holidays are always difficult. Children laughing, people passing, and instead of meeting their smiles she remembers the two that she's lost, and now the rest of her life that she's managed to misplace. She goes to work and teaches her students and feels good about her life, and the ghost of Mulder at her shoulder is nothing more than a whisper. 

\+ + + + 

Her mother invites him for Christmas. Of course she does. Scully is not at all surprised to see him sipping coffee at her mother's dining table. Fox is family, she thinks, and she's honestly missed Christmas without him, those few years before her mother's unknowable statute of limitations expired on whatever transpired between this man and her only surviving daughter. What does surprise her is how good he looks, how calm. The lines around his mouth don't seem as deep. He looks up at her with eyes that have light in them again. 

"Mulder," she says, mostly managing to keep the wariness out of her voice. He knows how she feels about Christmas, both the delight and the anguish of it. 

"Merry Christmas, Scully," he says, and has the nerve to offer her one of her mother's cinnamon rolls, as if he's the one who belongs there. She takes one all the same. 

Six a.m. under the tree, the kids ripping into their presents. Scully sits on the couch next to her mother with her feet tucked under her, cradling her second cup of coffee between her hands. Mulder perches in an armchair and looks startled when Bill hands him a box, glowering. 

"Don't worry," Bill says. "It isn't from me."

"No live ammunition then," Mulder jokes, and Bill actually smiles, though it isn't exactly a pleasant expression. Scully shoots a look at both of them. Bill ignores her, but Mulder catches her eye and there's a glint of a grin. He opens the box carefully, sliding his finger through the folds of the wrapping paper to loosen the tape, and lifts out a grey tie.

"Thank you," he says to Maggie, who beams at him.

"Grey is so dignified, don't you think?" she says. 

"Brings out my hair," Mulder says, holding it up to his face. 

"Oh, Fox," Maggie says indulgently. 

Mulder makes his excuses as they're setting the table for breakfast. She's in the pantry, hunting for the extra spoons and the spare bottle of syrup, and he comes to find her. Her world is so easily reduced to him and her, irrelevant of their surroundings. She looks up at him. 

"I'm not trying to intrude," he tells her. She can half-see Bill around Mulder's shoulder, and she's sure he's glaring. Same old Mulder, in his eyes, trying to cut her out of the herd of her family. "Your mom seemed disappointed when I didn't come for Thanksgiving."

"It's fine, Mulder," she says, and it is. She wasn't sure it would be, but it's been a pleasant morning. She's glad he's here, as odd as it's been. "Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas," he says.

She lifts her face toward his, and he leans down to kiss her on the cheek, as if they haven't been writing their own private tragedy these last few years. A kiss doesn't break the spell, but there's magic in it all the same. 

He steps out of the pantry, gives Maggie a hug, and shakes Bill's hand, and then he's gone. They all have pancakes and more coffee and then the television comes on and the kids glaze over, splitting their attention between the screen and their heaps of gifts. 

Scully opens her presents, saving Mulder's for last. She waits until everyone else is watching the kids and opens it quickly, ripping the paper. It's a book, an oldish book. She opens it. It's a first edition, apparently. The title on the cover reads Gaudy Night. She hasn't read anything by Dorothy Sayers that she remembers, but she knows Mulder: it'll be a good book, something she'll want to linger over. Something she'll keep on her bedside table. She might buy a newer copy for that, though. This one is too lovely to risk toppling a midnight glass of water onto it.

She goes home after lunch, craving the solitude of her apartment. The book nags at her. The more she thinks about the whole day, the more irritated she gets. Mulder at her mother's house, as if he belonged there. Mulder staring down her brother. Mulder getting along with the kids. Mulder giving her a perfectly lovely gift, when she got him nothing. There will be some message in the book, she's sure, some truth he wants her to discover.

She's restless by the time she gets home. The gym is closed, but she goes for a run, navigating the slippery streets with a determination she can't parse. She runs until her lungs sting from the icy air. Her face steams gently when she stops, panting, for a sip of water out of her tiny handheld bottle. She soaks in the tub afterward until she's pruny, then gets out and styles her hair and puts her makeup back on. She eats dinner from the leftovers her mother gave her, standing up at the counter. 

Mulder. There was something different about him today, and it irks her that she can't pin it down. And how dare he walk into her family's Christmas as if it were easy, and how dare he give her a beautiful, thoughtful gift that will require a thorough investigation. And how dare he smile so easily, when he's been dragging them both through some stygian hell with his refusal to accept her help or anyone else's, and how dare he not tell her if he's making changes, if he's feeling better, because dammit, she cares. She has worked so goddamn hard to make her life function without him in it, and he walks into her family holiday as if he's always belonged there, and upsets her careful balance with his easy smile.

She's in the car driving over almost before she can think about it. Snow starts to fall, whirling through the beams of the headlights. She parks on the street in front of the place they bought when she thought their lives would change, that the prodigals might return to the promised land. But she stayed at the hospital and he stayed in his office, and they slowly drifted apart. She sits in the car for a long moment, trying to talk herself out of this, but she made that decision before she left her own apartment. The snow swirls around her as she opens the car door. 

Mulder answers the door almost as soon as she rings the bell. He's barefoot, in jeans and and a sweater, and she wants him so badly.

"You don't have to ring the doorbell," he says, looking down at her with forest-deep eyes. "This is your house too."

She gazes up at him. A nice trip to the forest, she thinks. A person could get lost in those eyes, looking for the fountain of youth or some figment of the imagination. She's been lost in his eyes before. 

"Mulder, what are you doing?" she asks.

"Living," he says, half-flippant and half-earnest. "Do you want to come in?"

She reaches up and cups her hands around his face and pulls him down for a kiss, feeling the familiar circle of his arms sliding around her waist. His mouth has the comfortable heat of a banked fire, and she can feel the warm air spilling out of the house and catching her hair. The outrageous Christmas display next door tints his face with rose. She takes his hand and leads him inside. Behind her, she hears the click of the lock, but she's already walking up the stairs, shedding her coat.

They undress each other without speaking. She thinks of the first time she shrugged off her robe in Oregon, frantic for him to tell her that everything was going to be fine. He was so gentle then. She doesn't want him to be so gentle now. She lifts her chin, wordlessly demanding that he kiss her throat, as she runs her hands over him, crosschecking every scar and blemish against the catalogue in her mind. He is changing; she has to document it. He shivers at her touch and then stills. She clutches at him, digging her nails into his skin, suddenly afraid.

"If we don't let go," she whispers, "how will we ever know if we can be whole on our own?"

He says nothing, but pulls her closer. She fits herself against him the way she always did. Her body knows his, whatever else is happening in their lives. That's never been the complicated part. She leads him to the bed, their bed, its familiar comforter streaked with a rainbow of light from the display next door. She watches the light move over his skin as he kneels between her legs. He gives himself over to her, selflessly, and it is something more than sex and something less than worship, and she is so grateful: she has only ever wanted to be human to him, with him, on even footing. She opens her eyes and looks at him, giving him some share of the pleasure back as her back arches and her lips part. 

"I'm here," he says. "I'm here." She reaches out for him and holds him, but not as if he's the thing keeping her afloat. Neither of them can bear that much pressure these days. She guides him into her body, sighing with relief. Even if they can never be together again, she loves him, god how she loves him. Next to Mulder, she remembers her Sunday school lessons, the rapturous way the teacher spoke about husbands and wives and how God made them to match each other. Some hand of destiny might cradle them both. 

She strokes his hair as he loses himself in her, and murmurs his name, and he buries his face in the fall of her hair. They fall asleep wrapped up in each other, her knee wedged between his. She sleeps without dreaming, satiated and comfortable in the circle of his arms.

In the morning, she wakes before he does. She picks up her clothes and dresses, retrieving the items she discarded in her haste, like a film in reverse. She gets into her car and drives back to her apartment, her body still full of the memory of him. Not a mistake. Not to be repeated. She should know better by now than to imagine she could ever have enough of him. 

Some gifts are sufficient, she thinks, and showers him off her skin.


	7. Relief

She thinks about calling him. Her body craves him; her dreams are vivid and her thoughts drift. The days slip past and it's New Year's Eve. She's counting down to midnight by herself in her apartment, remembering that other midnight on the cusp of the millennium, the first time she really kissed him. The world seemed so wide open then, a buffet of possibilities for her delectation. Tonight she longs for him and resents it, sitting in her empty apartment. He is either at the bar or at home in the house they used to share, much better than he was when she left, and she is glad of it (god, she's glad of it, and grateful, that anyone was able to slow his slide into oblivion), but they are not what they once were, and that's an ache she can't ease with ibuprofen or wine. 

Her New Year's resolution, she thinks, as the night ticks toward morning. She has to either find her way back to him or give him up altogether. No matter how he has improved, the first seems impossible. In close to twenty-five years, she has never managed yet to accomplish the second part, but she has given him half of her life. There has to be a time that that is enough.

She wants to call him and tell him about her decision; after all, he's been the most important person in her life through so many of her personal tipping points. But she knows if she says it out loud to him, he won't understand. He'll be hurt. He'll talk her out of it. They'll drag along in this strange half-relationship forever, never truly able to release each other.

(In some secret corner of her heart, she hopes that if she called him, he would tell her he's ready, that there's no need for her nuclear option. But she knows that isn't how that conversation would end. Not yet.)

She stops for coffee a few weeks later on her way into work and her order gets swapped with the man behind her, who gives her his number and offers to buy her a drink. She goes, and it's fine, and they go out again the next week, and it's fine, and they make plans to go out again on a night that happens to be her birthday, and it's all fine. It's not splendid, it's not stunning, but it's fine, and that's almost enough.

On her birthday there are flowers. She checks the card and they're from Mulder. He has a standing order with the florist - she even got flowers the year he was missing. She buries her face briefly in the petals, an indulgence she can't resist. The petals are as soft as a baby's skin against her face, and she is reminded suddenly and overwhelmingly of William. She fills her lungs with the scent of lilies to drown out the memory of her son's scent, holding her breath until her chest aches. When the prickling has subsided from her eyes and her nose, she takes out her phone and calls Mulder to thank him.

"Can I take you out to dinner?" he asks. "Just dinner."

"I've got plans," she says, "but thank you for offering."

"Say hi to your mom for me," he tells her in that wry warm voice she loves.

She pauses. "I've got a date, Mulder."

"Oh," he says.

"We've been out a few times," she tells him.

"Is it serious?" he asks.

"I don't know," she says, knowing it's not, but remembering her resolution. She will never find a way out if she doesn't build it herself from the pieces of the road she's pulling up behind her. "But I thought I should tell you."

"Thanks," he says.

"I'll talk to you later," she says. "The flowers are beautiful."

Her date is mediocre. They pick at their food, and not even wine can make their conversation flow smoothly. She doesn't want to see him again and they both know it. Whatever spark there was is gone. On her way home she almost calls Mulder, but tosses her phone into the passenger's seat before she can give in to temptation. When he is ready - if he is ever ready - she will know. He will tell her.

She won't hold her breath.

By the time she gets home, she's weary. The date might have been fine - their previous encounters were pleasant enough - but it's her birthday, and nothing has ever charmed her more than a silly pink Snoball with a sparkler stuck in it and a keychain from the Air and Space Museum gift shop. She can feel the way that resentment is digging its claws into her now that she's thinking of it; her poor date must have seen winter weather in her eyes. She opens a bottle of wine and stares out the window at the lights of the city. Their house before they moved back had been in the middle of nowhere. She hadn't known she missed the orange haze of light pollution until all she had was the Milky Way splashed across the sky outside her bedroom.

Then at least she'd still had Mulder's arms around her.

She sits in the dark and sips her wine and wonders if it's even possible for her to unravel herself until she finds the place they're joined together, how much of her would be left if she frayed the strands that bind her soul to his. She doesn't know anymore if she really wants to try. 

The sigh that leaves her lips is more than half a prayer, but she isn't sure what she's asking. Divine intervention, maybe. A sign from above. The signs along the way have led her here, to this lonely place, and she cannot find the way back to herself. She leaves the dregs of the wine in her glass to clean up tomorrow and lies restless in her bed until, suddenly, sleep swoops over her.

\+ + + + 

The weeks go by and the weather warms. She switches to long sleeves for her runs instead of a jacket, and then short sleeves. Sometimes when she's finished at the morgue, there's still a sliver of sunshine to warm her cheeks. There are cherry blossoms; she avoids them, telling herself it's the tourists, knowing it's also the memory of a bench near the Potomac and the hours she and Mulder spent there.

Her therapist is disappointed with her progress. She doesn't say it, but Scully can sense it from the judgemental scratch of pen on paper. There is no way to explain her feelings about Mulder without prompting a slew of pamphlets and books on escaping codependency. There is no way to convince anyone else that truly it was the two of them against the world for so long Scully's instinct is still to search for the nearest wall to put her back against. She still cases every room she enters. She still, sometimes, looks for Mulder over her shoulder.

"I wish I could convince you that I'm fine on my own," she says.

Doctor G smiles. "Nothing about you could convince me otherwise," she says. "Dana, you're a highly successful woman with a very demanding career. You're clearly fine on your own."

Scully sighs. "But you would be more assured of my stability if I could cut Fox out of my life."

"Being attached to someone doesn't negate your independence," Doctor G says gently. "All I want from these sessions is for you to feel that you're not being consumed by this very powerful connection, Dana." She pauses. "Would you feel more stable if you could cut Fox out of your life?"

The silence stretches out, as vast and horizonless as the Great Plains, and Scully remembers how small she felt, how she reached across the gearshift to take Mulder's hand as he drove sometimes.

"Six months ago, I would have said yes without hesitation," Scully says. "But now I'm not sure." She licks her lips, twisting her fingers in her lap. "The difficulty with my relationship with Fox is that I always go when he calls. It doesn't matter what else I might be doing - I've always dropped everything and gone, and he would do the same for me. Did do the same for me, on several occasions. But he hasn't called lately."

"Does it bother you more that he used to call, or that he doesn't call anymore?" Doctor G asks, her pen scratching gently over her paper.

Scully wishes she could laugh. Surely there's some humor in the situation. "I don't know," she admits. 

"If you called today, would he come?"

"Yes," Scully says immediately. 

"Do you think that he worries that he depends too much on you?" Doctor G asks. 

"Fox?" Scully asks, as if there could be anyone else. She does laugh now, a quick little burst. "I'm not sure Mulder worries about much of anything. He tends to live in the moment." She considers for a moment. "He's the kind of person who's always found people to rely on." No wonder he was so lonely when they met, she thinks, a lost boy without a friend. It must have reminded him of life after losing his sister, in the empty interim between having people caring for him in his parents' lovely house and having people care about him as he earned accolades as a golden boy at Oxford and then the Academy.

Doctor G nods. "Is it a burden to be relied on?" 

"There have been times that it's been frustrating," Scully says, "but for the most part, it feels like an honor. He's so captivating, and his work is so important."

Doctor G raises an eyebrow. "His work?"

Scully looks away, gazing at a painting that's probably supposed to be soothing. "Our work, for a while, but my interest in the paranormal is limited to our joint investigation of it, for the most part. The science can be fascinating, but the hypotheses are outrageous. Seventy percent of the work was reining in Fox - he wanted to believe everyone." She smiles despite herself. 

"Sounds relatively thankless," Doctor G observes.

"It had its moments," Scully says, still smiling. 

"Your independence is your decision," Doctor G tells her in a soft voice. "Your boundaries are your decision. I think the only person who questions that is you, Dana."

Scully certainly isn't the only one, but she's not going to bring up her brother now. 

"All I want for you, Dana," Doctor G says, still in that gentle voice, "is for you to feel at peace and strong on whatever path you choose for yourself. I think that you haven't always felt that way in your relationship with Fox. That doesn't mean you shouldn't be in contact with each other, necessarily; it just means you need new rules."

"Rules aren't exactly his thing," Scully says, ducking her head.

"Nor have they always been yours," Doctor G reminds her, with a grin that surprises Scully. "But as long as it's your choice, I don't worry about you."

"Thank you," Scully says, and it really does help somehow.

\+ + + + 

There are flowers on her desk on the Friday before Mother's Day. She steps in and the scent of roses and lilies washes over her. She closes her eyes and inhales, holding her breath to make it last longer, pressing her lips together to stop the trembling. Mulder has sent her something every year since Emily. Mulder is the only one who always remembers, the repository of all her memories. Mulder is her history, chapter and verse. She caresses the petals with fingers that shiver. First Emily, and then William: motherhood always came to her unexpectedly, for too brief an interval. She will never stop being either of their mothers, but she would not tell a stranger that she has children. In the midst of green and pink, there is a card. She pulls it out. 

"You always made the right choice," it says, and then the scrawl of his signature, and a sudden irrational fury sizzles through her. He doesn't know. He wasn't there at the moments she needed him most. He is even less a father than she is a mother, and it isn't fair, and when she asked the most important question of her life, he made her wait for the answer and then disappeared. (She knows, underneath, that being abducted certainly wasn't his choice, that he was wise to think things through, that this is just a repurposing by her brain of the grief and the sorrow she can't let herself feel about the loss of her beautiful children. All the same, she feels it, jolting through her veins, and it drives her to him.)

She doesn't bother knocking on the front door, just unlocks it with the key she's carried since they moved in. Mulder is in the kitchen, in jeans with bare feet, putting some dishes away. A bottle of wine breathes on the table. He knew she was coming. Of course he did.

"Mulder," she says, and she wanted it snap out like the crack of a lash, but the sight of him with soap suds on his wrists distracts her. The end of his name comes out half-melted, like ice cream on pie.

"Happy Mother's Day," he says, drying his hands and handing her a freshly-washed glass. "Have a seat." He gestures towards the couch. She sits, distracted, forgetting the fury that brought her here. She doesn't need his validation for the choices she had to make, and at the same time, she craves it, strung out on her need for this thing that's been between them for years to be dismantled.

"I'm not going to move back in just because you sent me flowers," she says, her humor as off-kilter as the rest of her. "Beautiful flowers, even."

"I don't expect you to," he tells her, filling her glass. He sits down beside her.

She pins him to the couch with her eyes. "No ulterior motive?"

"I forgive you," he says. "I'm sorry I wasn't around. I should have found another way."

She sips at her wine, her knees weak and wobbly under the hem of her skirt. "And that's that?"

"No," he says. "But I hope it's a start."

She sets down her glass and sighs. "It's a start."

She cups her hand around his cheek and he closes his eyes in seeming pleasure. Her other hand is braced on his knee; she can feel his quadricep twitch and firm. She leans forward, her face close to his, savoring their proximity, and then she kisses him. The spark of her anger transmutes into something else entirely. She can't get enough of him, her hands roaming over his body as if she doesn't know it nearly as well as her own. He has always managed to surprise her. She thinks he always will. 

She is to desperate for him to even bother undressing, except that her skirt is too tight to pull up. She unzips it herself and tosses it to the floor along with her underwear. The scrape of his jeans against the delicate skin of her inner thighs is delicious and she shivers as she roughly unbuttons his fly and pushes the denim down his legs. She isn't gentle with him and he responds in kind, delighting her. Mulder in bed can be maudlin, and she couldn't handle that today. She wants regret fucked out of her; she needs the relief from the tension of waiting for his forgiveness all these years. When she comes, she sinks her teeth into his shoulder. Her lipstick leaves a round red mark on the fabric of his shirt and her hazy mind is amused, comparing it to a thousand inexplicable images of similar disfigurements over the years. Maybe this was the answer all along.

She gets dressed in the middle of the living room afterward, pleased by her grace as she maneuvers off his lap and picks up her underwear. She may feel vulnerable, her heart raw and her mind still reeling, but she doesn't look it. She tucks in her shirt and adjusts her breasts in her bra as he watches. Twenty years of practice and she can act the sophisticate, though half of her wants to curl up against his shoulder and half wants to pick the fight they've put off for years. How dare he believe that she needed his forgiveness for making the choice that she made to give up their son. How dare he be right. 

"Is this all we'll ever be?" he asks, fumbling with his clothing. His pupils are dilated and she could fall into his eyes. Mulder's particular gravity has always tugged at her, stronger than it has any right to be. She keeps her distance from the event horizon of him as she steps into her shoes, her knees still weak.

"Ask me again sometime," she says, and leaves without kissing him.


	8. Sea Change

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They have tamped these things down for so long that to release the pressure will be cataclysmic, filling the sky with ash like the explosion of Krakatau, shaking them to their very roots.

She's out running when her phone buzzes on her arm. She doesn't even bother trying to answer it - whoever it is can wait. She's enjoying the sun on her skin and the breeze that lashes at her hair and the way the trail rolls past under her feet. Only the thought of standing in heels keeps her from running past her limits; she has enough to deal with without adding aching calves to the list. After she slows, panting, she checks her phone. The tiny voicemail icon blinks, and the screen shows a missed call from Mulder. She touches the play button and presses the phone to her ear, sweat sealing the phone to her skin. 

"Scully, it's me," he says, and her heart thumps and drops. She can hear the breath he takes in. "We need to talk."

It's only when she's stepping out of the shower thirty minutes later that she realizes she doesn't remember how she got home. Her faithful feet carried her to her door and into her soothing deep-sea bathroom. Her hands did the things they've always done: turning the faucet to get a glass of water, massaging shampoo into her hair, sluicing soap over her body. She is grateful for her body's automaticity, its way of caring for itself even as her mind scrabbles fruitlessly at the unsolvable puzzles of her life. She wraps her hair in one towel and her body in another and sits on the edge of her bed, suddenly too exhausted to do anything else.

She's been waiting for this conversation for the best part of a decade, and she can feel the span of time in every muscle and joint. How much tension has she carried, waiting for this? How many more knots will her body tie itself into, while she tries to find an opportunity to speak to him? She has been waiting for so long. She is not ready. She cannot fathom the progress he must have made. He has been drowning himself in sorrow for so long and now he must see the light filtering through above his head. 

She is relieved, worn out, furious, hopeful, and fiercely delighted all at once. She falls asleep before she can even figure out which feeling is strongest. She wakes in the dim of twilight, still in her towels, and drags an old enormous Oxford sweatshirt over her head. She eats crackers and cheese standing in her kitchen. The flowers Mulder gave her are still on the counter, their petals luminous in the low light from the stove hood. The perfume is so strong she can taste it on her tongue like wine. It permeates the fabric of her sweatshirt. She brushes her fingers over the cool petals of a lily and then buries her still-hot face in the flowers. One of the stamens brushes her eyelashes and she blinks away burgundy pollen and rubs her face on the sleeve of the sweatshirt, leaving smears across the grey fabric. When she tries to sleep again, she only lies awake, hands folded under her breasts, staring into the darkness.

All she hears are all the words they've never said. She turns on a fan, plays soothing music under her pillow, opens the window to the sound of traffic, but nothing drowns out the endless recitation of their sins. 

It's that way for another three weeks. She moves through her days in a fog; it's the same fog that blurred the edges of her life after he was abducted and after she gave up her son. There aren't any sharp edges in the fog, but nothing is clear either. Nothing will be clear until she talks to him, but she can't see her way to it. She might as well open her veins or tear out her own heart as talk to Mulder about their son. They have tamped these things down for so long that to release the pressure will be cataclysmic, filling the sky with ash like the explosion of Krakatau, shaking them to their very roots. 

And then one day she gets dressed for work and gets into her car and halfway to Quantico, she calls in sick and takes the exit that will lead her to him. The fog lifts as she drives, blown away by the breeze when she rolls down the window, and by the time she reaches the house, the anger has bubbled to the top of her mind. She shoves the SUV into street parking, a space that's almost too small for it, and reaches into the back. There's a bottle of whiskey she bought for Skinner for some occasion and forgot to give him. It'll serve a purpose now, either kindling a flame or dousing it. Striding down the sidewalk, she feels like she could burn the house to the ground and all her memories with it. 

She doesn't even bother knocking. There's no point. She's still got keys to the place and her name on the deed. Mulder looks up, startled and frowsy and bare-chested, sitting on the couch wearing a pair of sweatpants that have seen better days. 

"I need a drink," she says, brushing past him on her way to the kitchen.

"It's nine in the morning," he says, and she hears the couch creak as he gets up. Sense memory sparks in her; she will always associate the squeak of stressed leather with the heat of Mulder's skin and the pressure of his body against hers. She pushes the warmth down, down, down, another layer added to the subterranean churn of her guilt and her anger. 

"I don't give a damn what time it is, Mulder," she says, clicking across the tile, the whiskey sloshing in her hand. He hasn't moved anything; she knows exactly what cabinet the mugs are in. She takes his favorite down with a little vindictive thrill and sets it on the counter next to the bottle of whiskey. The top bites into her hand as she twists it off. She only squeezes harder.

"I just called in sick to work," she tells him, reaching for the coffee. She fills the mug two-thirds of the way and sloshes whiskey in on top of it. There's milk in the fridge; she sniffs it before she adds it to the coffee. There's enough curdling from the alcohol even with fresh milk, reminding her of why she doesn't often drink Irish coffee. She's not willing to risk further upset by using spoiled milk. But the milk is fine, and the rest of the food in the fridge looks fresh too. She doesn't see any takeout containers, and there aren't even dishes in the sink. His feet scuff toward her and she glares at him over the fridge door as it swings shut.

"You don't do that very often," he says.

"No, Mulder, I don't," she says, the words hot and sharp behind her teeth. "Unless I'm in quarantine or dying, or previously, unless I was making some kind of excuse to chase down your sorry ass in whatever state you'd ended up in."

"Are you okay?" he asks, and she thinks she hears a shiver in his voice, which is gratifying.

"I'm fine," she says. "I am actually, literally, medically fine." She takes a sip of the coffee and winces as the fumes sting at her sinuses. There's a sense of satisfaction in the burn of it, though. Maybe that's her upbringing, finding absolution through pain.

"Emotionally?" he asks. 

"Emotionally, I'm pissed as hell," she says. She's biting through the ends of her words, consonants lacerating her tongue. "I can't sleep, Mulder, because every night, when I go to bed, all I can hear is you saying that we need to talk. I've had this conversation with you twenty different ways in my head, and I can't have it anymore."

"Hopefully once more," he says, and she wants to wrestle him to the floor. He's had the last word too often over the years, his tongue tripping them both up. Instead she swallows another mouthful of coffee, relishing the burn of it. He nods toward the living room and she shoves past him, kicking off her shoes and sitting down on the couch. It creaks comfortably under her and she can't stand it, can't imagine Mulder's weight pressing her into the cushions or the comfort of her head on his shoulder. She pushes herself up, prowling around the edges of the room in her bare feet. Mulder sips at a mug of unadulterated coffee and lounges against the door frame, obnoxiously at ease. 

"Where should we start?" he asks.

"Did you ever even want a baby?" The words rattle out of her, semi-automatic, surprising even her with their intensity. She's amazed they don't cut through him, make him stagger and bleed. She has shot him and caused less damage. "Or did you just want me to be happy?"

He gazes at her and sets his mug down deliberately on a side table. "At the very beginning, huh. Don't pull your punches on my account, Scully."

"You never wanted a house and a dog," she says, and now that the safety is off, she can hold nothing back. "You never wanted a family. When I asked you to be my donor, you took days to decide."  
"It was a big decision," he tells her, and she knows it's true but it isn't enough. "It was never - Scully, I promise you, never for a second - that I didn't want to."

"You said you didn't want it to come between us," she says. She can feel the hot flush in her cheeks. She cups her hands around her mug and lets it burn her palms. The pain steadies her somehow, gives her a center to hold onto. 

"Think about my family," he says, his voice soft. She can hear the effort to keep his words even and gentle. "I told myself I'd never have children. I'd convinced myself I'd never want them. Nobody else needed to inherit what I'd gotten. I wanted to say yes the second you asked me. I wanted all of that for us. But how could I?"

Her voice is caught in her throat. Anaphylaxis, she thinks, a deathly reaction to this systemic wash of emotion. She puts down her coffee. "You and I are not your parents," she rasps. "You and I are not other people."

"I did want you to be happy," he says. "I wanted both of us to be happy. Whatever that meant. I'm sorry it hurt you that I made you wait. I'm sorry it hurt you that I had your ova and didn't tell you. I thought I was protecting you."

"I can protect myself," she says, and she won't cry, she absolutely won't cry, but her eyes are prickling.

"You always could," he agrees, and god, she could fall in love with him all over again just for the way he says it. She can't look at him; he is altogether too much, too real, the history between them sliced into blinding moments of agony and ecstasy by the unearthly spears of light that skewered them both between dark earth and dark sky. She picks up her coffee again to steady her trembling fingers. She knows he sees her weakness. He always has, and he has always sheltered her as best he could. Her toes flex against the floor, feeling the strength of their foundations bearing her up. The plush of the rug reassures her. There are some comforts left in the ruins of the life they made.

"What I wanted scared me," he says softly. "I was selfish. I wanted you all to myself. I wanted it to be you and me the way it always had been, and I also wanted all the rest of it. My mind was reeling, Scully. I wanted the apartment and the Bureau and the X-Files and I wanted the house and the dog and the kid and a life we could make together, but I knew those things were mutually exclusive."

She feels detached from her body, displaced. Mulder would find the words for it, if she could tell him. He'd have reams of stories of people who went through the same thing. He remembers everything. She grips her mug tightly, trying to recenter herself. "I wanted that too," she whispers, barely breathing. "All of it."

"How could we bring a child into that situation?" he asks. "How could we ask each other to give up the work that had made us who we were? But, god, Scully, I wanted it so bad. I laid awake at night wanting it."

"I'm sorry," she says, because it's all there is.

He picks up his coffee, shaking his head. She sips at hers, watching him. The coffee has cooled but the whiskey still burns.

"You know what the worst part was, for me?" he asks, and he might as well be asking how she likes the local sports team. "The worst part was that you didn't ask me to be with you. You didn't ask me to make a life together. You only asked for my donation."

"Mulder," she says, and she can see that he knows what she wants to say, but he's going to make her say it. He takes a theatrical swallow of his coffee, letting the quiet languish between them, and she sighs, filling the space with her regret. "There's a literary device where referring to a part represents the whole of something."

"Synecdoche," he says, because he always knows.

"I thought you knew," she says. "What I wanted."

"How could I?" he asks, the rumble of laughter under his words. "We had never even kissed. Apis interruptus."

She glares at him. She shouldn't be surprised, after all this time, that he will always find a way to be flippant. In a way, it's a relief. They have a chance to begin again, if he can still make light of all they've been through. There is some hope. One day they will laugh about the ludicrous machinations of the world, that they have been kept apart by fairytale villains laying traps of deadly bees and stealing children to make them into changelings.

"You knew I had feelings about you," she says. "You've always had a remarkable intuition."

"I had a hunch," he says, a smile haunting his face. "But you can't build a life on a hunch."

"You could," she says with certainty. "If anybody could."

"I love you," he says. "I've loved you almost half my life now, so I better be able to say it. I love you so much it makes me stupid."

She can't help the corner of her mouth quirking up. "Is that what it is?"

"That and about a hundred other factors," he says. "Your turn."

"I'm not sure what you want me to say," she deflects, sipping at her coffee.

"Tell me about these feelings you have for me," he says. "Or had."

The lip of the mug presses into her lip. She breathes in the perfume of the whiskey, and it burns through her mind the way love does, heady and earthy and potent. "Have."

"Present tense," he murmurs. "I like that."

"There are a lot of feelings, Mulder," she says.

"And?" he prompts.

She sighs. "Irritation. Anger. Sadness. Frustration."

"It's like the worst lottery scratch ticket in history," he says, setting down his mug. She can see the way her words have unnerved him. They are proof against any disaster but the earthquake of each other. 

"Of course I love you," she says, letting her eyes meet his. The shock of it is like stepping into a hot bath, comfort and pain tingling through her. "But it's not always enough, Mulder. I'm not always enough for you."

"You are," he says, like it's a prayer. 

"I'm not," she says, and has to wash the words down with coffee so she doesn't choke on them. "If I were enough, you wouldn't have nearly torn yourself to pieces when you came back."

"I'm in therapy for that," he tells her. "It helps."

"I saw your prescription in your file," she says. "I'm glad. But if I were enough, you wouldn't have gone with Diana every chance you got."

"That was different," he parries automatically, but she watches his thoughts chase themselves across his face and wonders if he ever thought about it before. He has always been the tragic lead in his own life, the key figure of others' stories. She understands it and resents it and loves him anyway.

"I'm sorry," he says slowly. "I thought you didn't want me. And she came to me when I was sick, after the artifact. She cared for me."

"Mulder, the reason I wasn't there is that I was out working our case," she says. "Every time you went with her, I was working our case. I can't be sure that if she were alive today, you wouldn't leave me if she showed up with something interesting to bait you away."

"I don't know what to tell you, Scully," he says. "It wouldn't be like that."

"And isn't it lucky we have no way of testing your hypothesis?" she mumbles into her coffee.

He strides over and takes her mug, setting it on the table. His hands cup over hers, warmer than the porcelain she was clutching. "Trust me," he says. "That's all I have. But I'd marry you today if you'd say yes, and you know it."

"I'm not sure I'm the marrying type," she says, pulling her hands away. "I'm not sure you are either. A few words don't change who people are, Mulder." She can't accept the comfort of his touch when he has missed the point so catastrophically. The only magic in vows is in the keeping of them, and she has watched him leave too many times. Old anger throbs in her. It was Frohike who finally told her that Mulder and Diana had been married. Mulder himself had never found the moment, or the courage, or maybe he had never known it mattered that he had vowed his life to a woman who betrayed him over and over. 

"We got married," he says. "We were young. We were stupid. It didn't work out. I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I was ashamed, maybe, or I don't know, I didn't want you to think anyone else compared to you, because nobody did. Not Diana, not anybody. I'm sorry I made you feel like you mattered less than you did." He is gazing at her and she cannot look away. Mulder at his most earnest is a weapon of mass destruction. He could bring the world to its knees.

"If it were going to work, I would have to know," she says unsteadily. "I would have to know you wouldn't leave."

"I wouldn't," he swears. 

"You always do," she says, sorrow aching in her throat. "Mulder, I needed you, and you weren't there."

"Scully," he begins, but she shakes her head and he stops.

"I know why you left," she tells him. "I know you thought it was for the best. But we were lost without you, Mulder. William and I. We needed you. And I couldn't even call you." Her voice catches. "I had Spender, of all people, but I didn't have you."

"I wanted you both to be safe," he says helplessly.

"I know," she says. "I know. But you knew by then I wanted you. You knew I needed you. And we weren't enough. You leaving didn't stop us being in danger. You must have known it wouldn't change things."

"I hoped," he says.

"Hope isn't always enough either," she says.

"I know that," he says. "But sometimes it is."

"When?" Hope spans the silence between them, as tenuous as a highwire strung between skyscrapers. Any breeze could topple them.  
"Now," he says. "Look. I'm changing. I'm better. Well," he corrects, "I'm in the process of getting better."

"For me?" she asks, not wanting the answer.

"For me," he tells her. "I won't put that pressure on you. If all you want to be is my doctor, then be my doctor, but I'm telling you things are different."

Her neck twinges in anticipation of sorrow and shaking her head doesn't ease the tension. "I want to believe that, Mulder."

"Trust me, Scully," he says.

"I've always trusted you," she says. "And look where it's gotten us."

He says nothing.

"Mulder, you made the same promises in Virginia," she reminds him, crossing her arms. It reassures her to hold herself in. She has some defense against him, her arms building a wall. "And the darkness followed us anyway."

"We didn't say these things," he says. "We had to have this conversation before anything could really change. Didn't we." It isn't a question. "We had to talk about William, or we would never be able to move on with our lives the way we were supposed to. We could never be anyone but the people we were then."

She looks away at last and picks up her coffee. Tipping it to her lips gives her an excuse not to look at him as she drains the mug, licking the last drop from the rim. She sets the mug down again a little harder than she needs to. The heat of the whiskey rises behind her eyes as she stares at him. She might dissect him if she could; the truth has never been able to hide from her examination of it, though the answers might take years to be revealed.

"I was angry with you," he says. "For giving him away. For giving up. I just needed you to hold on a little longer."

"I was angry with you for leaving," she says, at long last. "You weren't there for the most difficult decision of my life. I needed you."

"I'm sorry," he says, and it sounds true.

"I'm sorry too," she says, and it takes every bit of her strength.

"I'm sure you made the right choice," he tells her.

"At least one of us is," she murmurs.

He opens his arms, tentatively, and she steps into them, pressing her face against him. She holds onto him as if he's the only anchor left. She's crying, her tears seeping into the miniscule spaces between his bare chest and her cheek, and she thinks that this is how erosion works, because there are always ways for something to come between them.

"I just wish I knew he was okay," she mumbles into his skin, tasting salt.

"Me too," he says. She closes her eyes to feel his voice rumble through her. "Scully, I know I left, but it didn't mean I didn't love him. It didn't mean I didn't love you. I was scared. It was all I knew to do."

She cries for a few minutes in the shelter of his arms. The hollow inside her grows, her anger transmuted into salt. Lot's wife too became salt, her regret too great to permit her salvation. Scully understands her now. The ruins of her life are still home. She feels Mulder's palm smoothing her hair, Mulder's fingers gently tipping up her chin. When he leans down to kiss her, she rises up to meet him, the old habit of letting her lips say what her words will not shape. New heat rises in her, a surge that will not be contained. She whispers her hunger into his open mouth and feels his body answer her call.

"My therapist thinks that sleeping together is setting back my recovery," he says as they break apart. "Potentially."

"Your therapist can go to hell," she says fiercely. "In this regard, anyway."

She takes him by the hand to lead him up the stairs, lets him watch as she undoes each button of her shirt, pushes his sweatpants off his hips with contemptuous ease. Just the tips of her five fingers in the center of his chest are enough to put him flat on his back. She straddles him, takes him into herself, and rides him into oblivion until they're both sweating and dazed. Forgiveness seems sexually transmissible, at least with the slick of his skin against hers. She falls asleep next to him with her fingers possessive on his shoulder.

They lie in bed most of the morning, leaving a space between them, but electricity can jump a gap, and their bodies have become conduits. She never mentions condoms and neither does he. There will be no miracle, this time; the only miracle is that they are still here, after William, after everything. Mulder watches her, and the hope in his eyes is too much. She slides closer until he can't focus, and kisses him with her own eyes closed. All peace is fleeting. She knows that much by now.

The afternoon light is turning gold when her stomach grumbles. Mulder smiles and clambers out of bed as she pulls herself together again, her professional clothes crumpled from their respite on her former partner's floor. By the time she makes her way downstairs, she can hear butter sizzling and smell toast. They eat omelettes in the kitchen, spreading farmer's market strawberry jam on their toast; it makes her think of the strawberries they found once, outside of a cabin in the mountains, the taste of them that was beyond what she'd imagined strawberries could be. Afterward, she lingers in the living room. Like the kitchen, there are things he's never touched. Her fingertips caress the spine of the album that her mother made of the months of William's growth. She has never showed it to him; there was never time. She pulls it out now and they sit on the couch together, knees touching. They gaze at the still images of their son smiling, rolling over, struggling to sit up.

"I can't believe we never did this before," he says.

"You never asked," she tells him.

"I should have," he says.

"At least you're asking now," she tells him.

She closes the book, stroking the cover as if her son could feel it. "I wonder what he looks like now."

"I hope he has your nose," he teases.

"I hope he has your eyes," she says, and can't help smiling.

"Are you coming home?" he asks.

The word jabs at her, a needleprick in her tender skin. "I don't know," she tells him. "I need time, Mulder."

"You've had time," he says. His voice is plaintive. His eyes won't meet hers. 

"I need more," she says. One half-decent day doesn't make a life, no matter how she wishes it. There are no genii rolled up in their rugs this time, no powerful forces that might make their wishes come true. "If I can, I will. That has to be enough for you."

"If," he repeats, as if she'll correct him to "when".

"If," she agrees. "If I can be sure we won't fall into the same old cycle. Two steps forward, three steps back."

"That's how I feel," he says. "That's what I want."

She brushes his jaw with her fingertips, feeling the beginnings of stubble. They have never intended to rip each other apart, but friction happens despite their best intentions. "Not today," she says. "But maybe. If that isn't good enough, then tell me now."

He catches her fingers and kisses them. "You're my constant," he says. "That hasn't changed."

She looks into his eyes. "I can't make you a whole person. And I can't see in the dark."

"I know," he says.

"I know where we live," she tells him. "If. But one fight doesn't solve this." She waves her hand in the air, as if there were some sign that could contain their decades of loss and discoveries, of transience, of treachery, of passion and need and consummation devoutly wished. "I need time."

He nods carefully, as if he fears moving too quickly or too much. She stands up, accompanied by the familiar sigh of leather. He is too tragic, sitting lonely in the middle of the couch. She bends to kiss his forehead, her fingers cupping around the curve of his skull. There are silver hairs among the dark and some tender part of her wants to stay and count them, to put each one on a timeline of their tragedies, but she has to go while the choice is still hers. Escape velocity is impossible to maintain in the face of the depth of Mulder's eyes. She steps into her shoes and walks out of the house, leaving the door unlocked behind her, but she feels the tug of his yearning all the way back to her apartment. 

She puts on her shoes and goes for a run in the glazed late afternoon, her body still feeling his touch. Her balance has shifted somehow; the earth holds her lightly and with every step, she thinks she might fly.


	9. Communication

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The laws of physics have rarely applied to them; even after everything, there is little friction to chafe or slow the slip of their words.

Her life feels like the peak of a swing's arc, a blissful moment of suspension when she can choose to leap or settle back into the back-and-forth of it. She has that playground sense of magic, of possibility, of absolute security. She could do anything. Every choice is the right choice. She goes to work and tries to make the world a little more just, and a little more merciful. She gives a voice to those who can no longer speak.

Mulder calls a few days later. She doesn't answer, just lets her eyes trace the shape of his name on the screen. When it goes to voicemail, she lets the message play over the speaker, without the intimacy of lifting the phone to her ear. It makes little difference. Distance has never mattered to them.

"Hey, Scully," he says, his voice scratchy and small. "It's me. Uh, just wanted to let you know that Skinner called me tonight and said they're moving me back to active duty, so I guess I might see you around. We're going out for a drink if you want to drop by." 

She knows the place he means. They've been there before, a number of times, back when they were trying to be social. She likes the place, but she'll let Mulder have his victory in peace tonight, uncomplicated by her simpler reinstatement or by the way his skin probably still bears the marks of her mouth. She smiles as she deletes the message. They are back where they belong, at the beginning of their journey.

She gives him a few weeks to settle in. It will be strange for him, to come back to the institution that molded and betrayed him. She feels oddly about it herself, but there is always more work to be done, and if she can shine a light into the shadows, she will be satisfied. If she has learned nothing else over the years of their partnership, she has learned that every light counts. 

At first, she feels his presence in the building, or she feels as if she can. He's in another department entirely, but she knows. There is a different flavor to the air, or a weight to it, something her science can't explain. Even the terrible coffee tastes better. But it's enough, to have him there. They'll meet when they're both ready. As the days go by, it becomes easier not to see him. There's a Christmas Eve feeling of anticipation that she thought she'd never feel again. She's happy enough to prolong it.

It's Agent Harrison who brings her the excuse she needs. She knocks on Scully's office door one day, with the same sweet puppy eyes as always.

"Agent Scully," she says with a genuine smile. "It's so good to see you."

"Agent Harrison," Scully says, standing and hoping her smile is just as bright. She is glad that Agent Harrison has lasted; it's not an easy job, and even less so for women, and even less so for cheerful kind women. It's the workers who make it difficult more than the work, but all the same. There aren't many of the same faces around; she is pleased that Leyla Harrison's is one of them. 

"Agent Mulder said you might be here," Harrison says.

"Agent Mulder was right," Scully tells her. "What can I do for you, Agent?" 

"Oh, nothing," Harrison says. "I just wanted to see for myself. It hasn't been the same around here without you two."

"I imagine it hasn't," Scully says. "Nobody trying to claim any mutants ruined the upholstery in the rental car. No cows through the hotel roof." 

Harrison ducks her head and laughs quietly. "Nothing so exciting as that."

"Probably for the best," Scully says, smiling.

"I don't know," Harrison says. "The two of you certainly kept things interesting. I never had any doubt that you were going to save the world. Of course that would have to entail some interesting expenses."

"Outrageous ones," Scully murmurs, "in the words of the auditors."

Harrison shrugs. "My mother always told me that nothing worth doing would be simple." She looks directly at Scully. "Even if you're not reopening the X-Files, the Bureau needed you. Both of you. Somebody has to tell the truth." 

Scully's throat is tight. She clears it with a little cough. "Thank you, Agent Harrison." 

Harrison nods. "It's good to see you."

"Likewise," Scully tells her.

She sits down again when Harrison has gone, her thoughts as jumbled as one of Mulder's bulletin boards, ideas layered over each other in seeming disorder. Nothing worth doing is simple. Shine a light to save the world. There are truths that need telling. There are allies who wish them well. That last thought is a warm one. She had forgotten there was anybody but Skinner who cared. She wonders where Monica is, where John went. She misses the Lone Gunmen, who gave their lives for a nation that scorned them. She hasn't heard at all from Mulder's friend Danny. She hasn't been to Pendrell's grave. But there is Leyla Harrison, who has stood staunch all these years. 

All at once it's too much. The balance of her life shifts under her, canting her toward him. Harrison is right: some vital equilibrium is lacking now that they're out of the basement, out of the Hoover Building. Like the magnetic poles, they must shift and realign now and then. She thinks of the years they spent running full-tilt on the treadmill of their assignment, going nowhere, the incline adjusted by unknown factors every time they managed to catch their breaths. This is better. Her life's work can be her life, and not her work. She has hope now that her life can be their life again. If William is their lodestar, that's all right. Mulder has always been able to see in the dark. She has always understood the principles of celestial navigation. Together they will find their way home. 

She crosses the bullpen with two cups of coffee. His head is bowed over his desk, presenting a familiar profile, and she feels the ghosts of the same butterflies in her stomach, two decades gone. She imagines herself telling him she's looking forward to working with him, but that's too much. Their new start has to acknowledge their history, not erase it.

She sets the coffee on his desk and he looks up, his eyes crinkling at the corners, and oh God, it would be so easy today to slip back into the way things always were when they were young, all easy words and lighter hearts. 

"I hear you sent Agent Harrison my way," she says, letting just the edge of humor into her voice.

He stretches a little in his chair. The fabric of his shirt pulls taut over his belly and she tries not to look. "I don't kick puppies, Scully."

"Hmm," she says. "Well. It was nice to see her."

"Your number two fan," he says, picking up the coffee. "Maybe number three if we count Skinner."

She raises an eyebrow in an attempt to warn him off, as if he's ever paid attention. "Thank you."

"It's nice to be appreciated," he tells her. "Did you have any trouble finding me?"

"I just followed the trail of sunflower seeds," she says, smiling at her own joke and hiding it behind her cup of coffee. He nods. 

"Were you going to come and see me, if Harrison hadn't come along?" he asks, and to her surprise, there's no ache in his voice. It's just a question. 

"I was," she says. "It's hard to find the time."

He raises an eyebrow at her in gentle parody and she glances down and away. "It would be easy," she says, raising her head to look at him, "to fall back into old habits." It takes more effort to meet his eyes than she would have thought, but it takes no effort at all to banter back and forth with him. The laws of physics have rarely applied to them; even after everything, there is little friction to chafe or slow the slip of their words. Their hopes brush each other as easily as their fingers might, offering the same warm reassurance. 

"Too easy?" he asks.

"Yes," she says, gazing steadily at him. "So I put it off. But I'm here."

"You are," he agrees. His eyes are forest green, forest deep. She looks away - she's had too many nice trips to the forest from which she nearly never returned, and she's got work to do today. A framed photograph catches her eye. It's the two of them at a crime scene, dark trench coats flapping in the breeze, their heads close together as if they're sharing the world's rarest secrets. They were probably discussing where to get lunch, she thinks, but there's something about the two of them, shadows in the fog, that excludes the rest of the world. She misses that aspect of their relationship, but she wouldn't go back to it. It was lonely, even with him close enough that she felt his breath on her skin. At the end of the day, they went home to their separate and empty apartments and picked up the phone to feel the connection between them hum like a plucked string.

"Mulder," she says, and she can't keep twenty years of affection and frustration out of her voice. That photograph tells the story of them, a thousand words on who they've been to each other. (A thousand words would barely make a beginning, she thinks, but the picture says it all somehow.)

"Just somebody I used to work with," he says. "She's my physician and my friend."

She narrows her eyes at him. "You know better than that."

"It isn't in a heart-shaped frame," he counters. "Nobody's going to look that closely."

"That's a relief," she says. "No more bugs in my pen."

"Or your wall socket," he says, "and no cameras in the ceiling."

"Some days I don't know how we survived," she says, shaking her head.

"We were saved by good works," he tells her. "Or maybe some measure of grace. We kept the faith."

"We did," she says. "However strangely."

"I always thought heaven would be a little better lit than this," he teases, squinting under the glare of the lights. 

"If there's anything I've learned from my years working with you, Mulder, it's that one should always expect the unexpected," she says. She checks her watch, hoping to hide the warmth in her eyes. "I've got to get back."

"See you around," he says, and it's nearly a question.

"I'm sure you will," she tells him. 

She can feel his eyes on her as she leaves. She walks tall as she crosses the bullpen, fortified as always by the strength of his beliefs. Mulder will unravel the twisted reasoning of the living. She will give voice to the dead. They will pull in tandem on their separate paths, harnessed together as always by the pursuit of truth. It doesn't chafe anymore. The weight of her work as she steps back into the morgue is a relief. All purposeful tools have heft. Her father, she thinks, would be proud of the gravity she has given her position.

Underneath her sense of rightness there is still that Christmas morning feeling, some fragment of her breathless with delight, and she lets herself revel in it. There are things to look forward to in her life. There might be sunlit mornings and breakfast in bed, and there might be nights when rain draws a curtain around them. There are more endings to her story than she thought to hope for when she left him, and that is miracle enough.


	10. Promise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They’ve never talked to each other any other way, no matter what untouchable sin twanged between them.

The fact that he's there in the building when she's at work is enough, oddly. She sees him now and then, but she feels no need to seek him out. It is an unexpectedly secure position; she feels perfectly poised to pursue whatever path life presents to them. Work and life make a comfortable routine. She files her paperwork, she runs, she goes to church with her mother. Once in a while, she meets a friend for a drink, and they don't ask her if she's shot anyone. The summer swoons on, and if she thinks of Mulder when she slides between her crisp sheets (and sometimes she does), it's a sweet languor without any urgency in it.

All things happen in their own time, she knows, and all manner of things shall be well. The choices she's made have led to this moment. She's never found a way to regret it, not even the worst moments. Not even the Flukeman. 

In August, the universe gives her the nudge she needs. She performs the autopsy on a victim in one of Mulder's cases. She's a little astonished that he doesn't come to the morgue and hover over her shoulder, but that gives her a chance to make use of some teachable moments during the process as her students lean in, murmuring to each other. When the lab results come back, she slips them into an envelope and steps purposefully into the hallway. He isn't hard to find; maybe she's tuned to him, but there he is, lingering in the first place she looks. 

"I was asked to give this to you," she says, holding the envelope out. "Autopsy results for the Nguyen case." He takes it between two fingers. She holds onto it for just a moment, and it completes some circuit between them. Her fingertips tingle. 

"You don't have to make excuses if you want to talk to me, Scully," he says with a twinkle in his eye. "My number hasn't changed."

"Neither have you." She stares up at him, trying to look stern, but her resolve can never stand against him. 

"I don't know," he says. "I feel like the new and improved model. Fox Mulder 2.0."

"I'm surprised you had the memory left to upgrade," she says, keeping her face straight.

"Ha," he says with a hint of a smile. "That's good, Scully. Smartphone jokes. Very topical."

The way they stand neatly cuts out the rest of the world. He stands slightly over her, a little possessive and a little protective, and she cases the room from behind his shoulder.   
There's no tension in it, though; the only thing she's aware of is him. They are safe, or at least safe enough. It's a nice change from the years they spent watching each other's backs even in the secured hallways of the Hoover Building. He taps his fingers gently on the manila envelope and it spells out nothing at all. 

"Do you want to get coffee?" he asks, slightly hesitant, which melts some small tender place inside her. "Just coffee, no expectations. I owe you for the other week."

"Do you make that clarification every time you ask someone out for coffee?" she counters, buying time.

"Only if I'm afraid they might be overcome by the urge to jump my bones," he says, and she purses her lips. God, it's been so long since he flirted with her in the office. It seems both outrageous and the most natural thing. But they've never talked to each other any other way, no matter what untouchable sin twanged between them.

"What about the urge to step on your toes?" she asks, as sweetly as she can.

He drops his gaze to her feet. "Less of a concern. I like the new shoes, though."

"Thank you," she says, amused that he noticed, but not entirely surprised. He has enjoyed her shoes for years, or at least the things they do for her legs and her height. 

They look at each other. She forgets what she wanted to say. It's enough to be here with him, feeling like half of their partnership again.

"I really just came over here to give you these results," she murmurs at last.

"All we've established is that you didn't come over here to jump my bones," he says. "Allegedly." The smile warming his voice is close to showing on his face, she thinks. It doesn't exactly go with his serious suit. 

"It is not my intention, at this moment, to jump your bones," she says, in a voice firm enough to etch a line in the tiled floor. Not quite the boundary Doctor G would like her to set, but her rules are her own. "I will, however, accept your offer of coffee."

"A bold move, Agent Scully," he says. "When and where?"

"I'll text you," she says. "Your number hasn't changed. Allegedly."

"My phone's on silent after ten," he tells her. She knows this game. She played it as a teenager, and then again years later, after she'd met him, almost every night as she watched the red numbers on her alarm clock. It's an old game, you-hang-up-first-style buying time. They can make time now. They don't have to steal it from others. 

"As if I'm not the world expert in leaving messages for you," she says. "'This is Fox Mulder. I've run off to Puerto Rico or Russia or possibly the Arctic on the strength of a message I found in my breakfast cereal. Leave a message with your name and number and I'll get back to you if I haven't been taken prisoner by shadowy government forces.'"

"That's not verbatim," he says, lifting his chin.

"It might as well be," she tells him.

"I'm a new man," he says, leaning in again. "I text back."

"Promise?" she dares him. 

"Promise," he tells her. "Pinky promise." He reaches down with his free hand and hooks his pinky through hers, gently swinging her hand back and forth. His fingers are warm. He used to fold her hands between his after autopsies, or put keep gloves in his pocket for her. She would like to slip her hands under his suit coat now, soaking him in through the silky cotton of his tailored shirt.

"That sounds serious, Agent Mulder," she says, retrieving her fingers before old habit overmasters her. Funny how quickly their years together came to weigh more than their years apart, touching him easier than not touching him despite her long practice at keeping her hands to herself.

"As the grave," he agrees. She glances sharply at him, watching for a flinch or a flicker, but he seems fine. She refrains from checking his pulse or his pupils here in the hallway. His breathing doesn't hitch. He stands steady, still leaning into her space. That's progress, she thinks, more than he made for all her asking. She's glad, and irritated, and most of all she's relieved. 

"Did we schedule your wellness visit?" she asks.

"I don't remember," he deflects. "We can talk about it over coffee. Synchronize our calendars. Discuss getting a dog."

"Why would we need to talk about getting a dog?" she asks. Unless he wants to share custody of it, it doesn't seem like her concern. It's a strange way to ask her to move in, if that's what he's doing, and a stranger way to ask anything else. They've never had quite the same taste in dogs anyway. She can't imagine them at the shelter, explaining their estrangement (if she can call it that anymore - it seems more like a foregone conclusion). 

"It's still your house," he tells her. "It seemed polite."

She nods, disappointment creeping in from somewhere. It isn't even that she wants a dog right now, except that as soon as he said it, she did. She wanted a dog to share with Mulder, the right dog for both of them, sprawled between them on the couch. She wants to come home to a house that isn't always clean, a space she has to negotiate in subtle ways. Her apartment doesn't feel like a home with only her in it. It's taken her until now to articulate it in those particular words, but she can feel the honest weight of the thought. She was never alone, growing up. She treasured her independence and her solitude during those years under surveillance, but she's old enough to look for comfort in company now.

"I wouldn't want it to be a place you wouldn't want to come back to," he adds.

"Don't worry about that," she says. "Get a dog if you want one."

"I'm not exactly sure how to interpret that," he tells her.

She reaches out, her pinky locking through his in a promise she won't speak aloud. Not yet. "Don't worry," she repeats. "I have to get back to work."

"Text me," he says, and she nods over her shoulder.

Her office, oddly enough, feels homey, though she supposes she's just as alone here, aside from the dead, packed away as neatly into file folders as they are in their drawers down the hall. She slides a photograph out from under the edge of her in tray: Mulder, asleep in the rocking chair she bought to nurse in, with William asleep on his chest. 

She lets herself gaze at it for a long minute before she pushes it back under the tray, so that only the very edge shows. She will only indulge in hope the way she does in liquor: small portions, rationed out, so that she doesn't go through the day with a dizzy head and a heart that longs to wring itself out in tears of sorrow or joy. 

She'll text him. They'll have coffee. After that, she'll take it from there, one cautious step at a time, the way she was taught. Surely the renewed light in his eyes will illuminate their way as well as any flashlight ever has. Surely this time they'll find a way through the dark moments, after all they've done to reforge themselves.

Her hands are warm now, and they stay that way for the rest of the day.


	11. Steep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coffee with Mulder could never just be coffee, of course.

She takes a few deep breaths as she opens her texting app. Coffee with Mulder could never just be coffee, of course. It's a date, and they haven't been on dates. She doesn't have an etiquette for it. She isn't sure how to flirt with him without promising the heart he's always had. 

"Sunday," she types at last. "Teaism Dupont. Ten a.m."

Almost immediately, he texts back the little picture of the cup of coffee and she smiles to herself. A change of venue, a change of pace, but the sight of his name on her notifications still makes her heart flutter. 

On Sunday she gets up and runs while it's still cool, taking her time. She showers when she gets back, shaves her legs because she feels like it, and puts on wide linen pants that caress her smooth skin. They feel a little bit like a costume, as if she's putting on another life where she takes her well-groomed children to garden parties with the other doctors from her clinic, her husband putting his arm around her with the ease of someone who has never been under surveillance. But even in her dream of another life, the man beside her is Mulder, in his suburban drag that he wore when they played house in the Falls at Arcadia.

She puts on the big sunglasses she splurged on the last time she was at the optometrist. They go with the look, weekend chic. She remembers the vests she owned when they met, thinking they were a good casual look, and smirks to herself. There was a lace shirt too. She wore it on her date with her godson's friend's father, that unmemorable man. And now, twenty-odd years later, here she is on a date with Mulder. Their first date, maybe. She can't remember. They weren't together for so long, until they were, and by then going out was never a date.

It's too much to think about. She pulls up and parks and slides out of her oversized SUV and there he is. She pushes her sunglasses up on her head and gazes at him. 

"Hey," he says, hanging his sunglasses from the vee of his shirt, and somehow it's heartbreakingly suave. He looks healthy. He looks happy. She honestly can't remember the last time she saw him this way. Probably around the same time she owned that lace shirt.

"Hey," she says, and as she looks up at him, he leans down to kiss her on the cheek. It feels right. He blinks at her, afraid of having overstepped the line she's drawn between them, but she smiles at him.

"I thought we said coffee, Scully," he says, a laugh in his voice.

"Neither of us is young enough to be slamming back espresso," she tells him. "Are you all right, Mulder? You look a little flushed."

"I went running," he says.

She's still looking at his sunglasses, and the way they pull his shirt a little farther down his chest. "Good. I'm glad you're getting your exercise in."

"As my doctor?" he asks. "Or just as an interested party?"

She rolls her eyes at him, but desire catches in her throat all the same. It's the first date she's been on where she's already known the other person body and soul, and still anticipation lights a fire under her.

She orders hot mint tea, because she's never picked up a taste for ice, but the mint will feel cool, and a double order of their sweet potatoes. She loves the sweet potatoes. 

"Lunch," she says by way of explanation as he's looking over their cookies, picking up a bag of salted caramel. He orders iced Earl Grey to go with it. She tries to remember if she's seen him drink tea before. 

"I wasn't judging, Scully," he says, handing the server his card before she can protest. "I told you, I'm taking you out for coffee. Or tea and sweet potatoes. It's not like we've ever been traditional."

"No, we never have," she says, biting her lip. "Thank you."

"To my gainful employment," he says, clinking the lip of his glass against her cup. 

She meets his eyes and takes a sip of her tea. It's very hot, but the mint lingers as an icy tingle. She watches the steam curl up from her cup in the air-conditioned chill and glances around. The place is busy, and they're surrounded by people, but absolutely no one is paying attention to them. She relaxes into her chair. It's habit to evaluate the situation, to look for the nearest escape route, but she feels safe here with him. How far they've come after all.

"This is nice," she says. "I wish we'd done this more often."

"We drank a lot of coffee," he says with a wry smile that warms her even more than the tea. She licks her lips. "Back in the day. If I had known you preferred tea…."

"You know what I mean," she tells him, and she isn't even frustrated with his deliberate misdirection. 

"I do know what you mean," he says. "I didn't think you'd want to go out with me, especially after spending every working hour together."

"Mulder," she says, cupping her hands around her teacup so that she won't reach for his hand, "for a profiler, you certainly do miss the signs sometimes."

"It was right under my nose," he jokes, waving his hand in the air so it marks her height. He knows, of course. He's a graduated scale calibrated to her, she thinks: her height in heels, her height in flats, her bare feet with her toes brushing him. She reaches across and breaks off part of his cookie.

"Hey!" he protests.

"You deserved it," she says firmly, and he shrugs. 

"Thank you," he says after a moment of studying her.

"What for?" She takes another sip of tea, hot and cold.

"For coming here with me," he says.

"You thought I wouldn't come," she says, almost a question.

One shoulder lifts, changing the topography of the shadows on his chest. "I think there was a time you wouldn't have said yes. In fact, I think there was a time you didn't say yes."

"I didn't say no," she corrects him. "I said ask me again. And you did."

"The most terrifying moment of my life," he teases, but she hears the frisson under it. "Hey, next weekend, do you want to go to the junior prom?"

"Why do you think I moved out?" she asks. There will never be a good time to ask it, so she lets it fall into the space between them.

He sighs. "Scully, that's a heavy question when it isn't even happy hour."

"I didn't leave because I didn't love you," she says. "I didn't leave because I didn't want to be your friend. You shut me out."

"I know," he says. His voice is very faintly rough. "I'm sorry."

"It was too hard," she tells him, because she has to get through to him, just this once, and if it doesn't work, this is the end. As sweet and easy as things have been between them lately, this is a tipping point. She can feel it in her bones, the way her father always knew when a storm was coming.

"I know," he says. "Thank you."

"For leaving?" She can hear her own skepticism putting sharp edges on her words.

"For telling me why you left," he says, taking the pain as his due, as usual. "For not abandoning me entirely."

"I told you, Mulder, it would have taken too long to explain your health history to anyone else," she says. She stirs her tea to hide the momentary trembling of her fingers. It has taken Mulder years to deal with his death; she has measured out her recovery according to the same metrics, in months and sleepless nights and coffee spoons.

He reaches out and takes her hand. Her fingers clench and then relax in his. His hands are warm despite the way he's been clutching his iced tea. "Scully. Thank you."

"You're welcome," she says, just above a whisper, because her heart is too full to muster any more.

"I haven't been an easy person to live with," he says. "You didn't deserve that."

She makes a noncommittal sound. Neither of them has ever been truly innocent.

They drink their tea for a moment. She gazes into her cup. Steam spirals up into the humid air and her eyes follow it and then catch in the open vee of his shirt. He looks good, healthy and strong. 

"You look good," she tells him, because she's been staring at him for just a little too long. 

"So do you," he tells her.

"Regular hours and a skin care routine," she says wryly, thinking of how wistful she's been for their late nights. "Makes all the difference in the world."

"No madmen dragging you out of bed at all hours to hunt snipes," he teases.

"No," she agrees. "No madmen in or out of bed."

"A woman like you?" he says, affecting shock. "You should be beating them off with a stick."

"If a gun didn't work, I can't expect a stick would suffice," she says.

"Touché." He picks up his tea and takes a swig. "I thought you were seeing someone."

She remembers looking across the table and feeling nothing. She looks across the table now and her heart skips a beat. She sighs. "I gave up," she says. "It was pointless."

"Why pointless?" he asks, and she can hear the hope rising in him, as palpable as the onset of spring.

"What can you talk about?" she says wryly. "'What do you do for a living?' 'Have you ever shot anyone?' 'Do you have any kids?'"

He winces. "Did you tell them you shot your partner?"

She rolls her eyes and purses her lips. He'll never let her forget that. "No. Should I have?"

"You would have weeded out some of them pretty quickly," he tells her.

"What would it have said about the ones who were left?" she asks, feeling the ache of all her scars.

"Good point," he says.

"I think I've met my quota of madmen," she tells him. "A lifetime's worth."

"I'm not as mad as I used to be," he offers.

"No," she says, measuring out her words like honey. "I can almost believe in Mulder 2.0."

"Almost," he says.

"I just don't want to think that you're doing all of this just for me," she tells him, even though it's a lie, a little bit. There is some irrational corner of her heart that wants the grand gesture, the impossible transmutation. It's shouted down by the better angels of her brain, the ones that tell her she can't be anyone's salvation. Except that she has been, and she will be, and they redeem each other every time.

"At first I was," he says, and her heart skips again. "But then I wasn't. If you told me you were never coming home, I wouldn't stop. I can't rely on you for my happiness."

"No," she says. "Sometimes there isn't enough to go around."

"I seem to remember telling you once that you made me a whole person," he says.

"I seem to remember that too," she says, feeling her lips twist into some sort of smile. She reaches back to smooth her hair, touching her neck, remembering the stab of the bee and the sudden choking heat of her body.

"That wasn't fair," he tells her. "I wanted to tell you how I felt about you, but that wasn't the right way to say it. I put a heavy burden on you."

Slowly she raises her gaze to meet his. There are depths to his eyes she thinks she's never seen, despite extensive study. "Thank you," she says after a moment.

"I don't need you to complete me," he says. "You don't need to carry that weight. I can be responsible for my own well-being now. But that being said, Scully, I don't feel entirely myself unless you're around."

"I know what you mean," she says. They look at each other for three or four breaths. She would swear she can feel their heartbeats syncing. He offers her a cookie and she takes it and breaks it into small pieces, eating them slowly, savoring the sugar and spice of them. She feels that magic of anticipation again, the feeling she used to get on Christmas Eve, all those many years ago.

"Can we start over?" she says, after a long moment.

"All over?" he asks, a tinge of incredulity tinting his voice. "Twenty-three years is a lot to rewind, Scully."

"I know that," she says. "I don't want to erase any of that. But we could do this. Coffee. Dinner. Drinks after work once in a while."

"What does your therapist say about that?" he asks, leaning in.

She purses her lips in remembered frustration and amusement. "She says that codependency is rarely positive. Yours?"

"The same thing. I think they have a script. Maybe we should have gone to marriage counseling instead," he teases. "At least they wouldn't be trying to keep us apart."

"She makes me call you Fox," she says, grimacing a little.

"Mine too," he says. "Dana."

"It sounds so strange," she complains, ignoring the thrill that goes through her.

"I don't know," he says. "I don't mind it as much as I did."

"Fox," she says, much bolder than she did all those years ago, the first time she tried to say his given name. He shrugs. There's a little smile on his lips.

"If that's what you need to make this feel new," he says.

She shakes her head slowly. Her smile is a mirror of his. "Maybe on special occasions." She sighs and picks up her tea, warming her hands with the cup. "Nobody understands us but us, Mulder."

"It's lonely sometimes," he agrees. "But I'd rather be lonely with you than anybody else."

She looks up at him. "When I said you didn't need to worry about a dog, I didn't mean because I wasn't coming home."

"No?" he asks, and she hears the hope again.

"No," she says, trying to keep herself from smiling too much. "I like dogs. I've wanted another dog for a while. It just never seemed like the right time."

"Oh," he says. "What kind of dog?"  
"Doesn't matter," she says.

"Maybe not a Pomeranian," he suggests. "Too many natural predators."

"I don't chase swamp monsters anymore," she says. "I don't think it would be a concern."

"Things change," he says.

"Some things don't," she tells him, and finishes her tea.

When they leave, she tips her face up for another kiss on the cheek. He leans down obligingly, as if they've been doing this all their lives together, as if this gesture could ever truly be casual between the two of them. She cups the box of sweet potatoes in her hands to keep herself from reaching out to him. Things might be easy later; they won't be easy today. That's all right. She knows how to nourish a tender, fragile hope. Years of transplantation have given her a knack for it. When she drives away, she isn't leaving him.


	12. Consummation

One day she just gets a picture of a dog, some kind of fluffy mutt, cuddled up with a stuffed dinosaur on the rug she and Mulder bought at that antique mall. Just then her email pings with urgent messages and she forgets to reply to Mulder's text until it's too late. Maybe he's dog sitting, she thinks. Stranger things have happened than Mulder making a friend with a dog. But she rethinks her weekend run and plans a route that takes her through the park near the house. She takes her water bottle. It's gotten warm. She's sweating gently when she catches sight of them. Mulder sees her immediately; she sees it in the alert set of his shoulders. They make minute adjustments in their trajectories, converging as if it were planned, or maybe it's just their specific gravities, forever drawing them together. 

"Fancy meeting you here," he says. The dog strains toward her, all lolling tongue and flopping ears. She bends down to ruffle those ears, looking up at Mulder from her crouch.

"Must be fate," she teases.

"Funny you should say that," he says. "This is Kismet."

"You didn't name him Iced Tea?" she asks, smoothing Kismet's fluffy head.

"That's the next dog," he says. "Either that or Yankee."

She stands up, which makes Kismet dance at her feet, begging for more petting. "That's a big step, Mulder." She sips water from her bottle, gazing at him. His face is relaxed, his brow smooth. Just a man and his dog in the park, the most ordinary tableau she's ever seen.

"I've got long legs," he jokes.

"He's definitely cuter than the fish," she tells him, leaning to scratch the dog again. Kismet leans against her comfortably and she wonders what it must like to be a dog, to love so instantly and so easily.

"Harder to clean up after, though," Mulder says.

She gazes at him and he gazes back. Kismet pushes his round head under her hand and then wanders back to Mulder. 

"Going my way?" he says, some moments later. 

"I think I was," she tells him. 

They start off at a gentle pace, Mulder calling Kismet to heel. A breeze picks up, ruffling his hair, and she's reminded of the first time he asked her to go for a run. She didn't know what to do with him then. She couldn't imagine living without his restlessness now. She feels alive, running next to him, and maybe she takes a stride and a half to his one, but they're in perfect rhythm anyway.

"Doesn't seem like your usual route," he says.

"I hadn't run it in a while," she says. "Sometimes you miss the old neighborhood."

"I'm sure it misses you," he says. "Scenic views." She can almost feel his eyes on her as he gives her the onceover. 

She rolls her eyes at him. "I'm sure there are other views for them to appreciate."

"Scully, are you flirting with me?" he asks, giving her the most ridiculous affronted voice she's ever heard from him, and oh, she's heard it so many times.

"Some things will never change," she says, shaking her head. 

"Is that good or bad?" he asks.

"Good," she says, and can't stop herself adding, "when they're the things I loved about you before."

His smile lights up the sunny day.

They pace each other back to the house. She makes the excuse of needing to fill her bottle and invites herself in. It's a hot day, certainly, and she doesn't want to get dehydrated on the miles back to her car. Mulder shows her out, his hand at the small of her back, and she stretches up to kiss him. His mouth is searing against hers. She savors the heat of it; even ice water doesn't quench the embers that are left in her belly. She smiles to herself as she goes on with her day, his kiss still with her like a secret clenched in her fist.

\+ + + +

They are professional at work: they don't fence themselves off from the world for sotto voce conversations or take each other's hand in the hallway (what was she thinking anyway in that moment, aside from her need for him). But they see each other more.

She likes that. 

It's interesting, to see him from a distance. She leaves a space between them, but electricity still arcs across the room when their eyes meet. She could tell him anything, she thinks, by tipping her chin a certain way, by calibrating the angle at which her eyebrows lift or come together. She wonders how they managed to hide so much from each other for so many years, when she can feel him at her shoulder, hear him murmur in her ear, just from a glimpse of his outline against the blank walls of the corridors.

The photograph on his desk says it all, really. How many similar artifacts did they leave behind, their past etched out for anyone to read? No wonder they were so easy to unravel, when those who had been watching sprang their traps. No wonder they were watching in the first place. She wonders what those shadowy figures expected, and what they imagine they got instead. 

She misses the basement, but she's too old to sustain the foxhole mentality: two against the world takes too much out of her now. She's glad they've outgrown their roots, that there are more people in her life, even if Mulder centers her. 

\+ + + +

They start running together on the weekends, not by any agreement. She drives to the house and he opens the door, and neither of them even pretend to be surprised. They run loops around the local park until the dog's tongue is lolling with joy and exhaustion. Afterwards, she leaves, at least the first few times, but then it seems foolish to have driven over and not to stay for a big. Mulder pretends he isn't buying pastries to tempt her, and she plays along. She does love the croissants from Le Caprice. Negotiating the kitchen is easy; he hasn't moved anything. Everything is exactly where she expects it to be, and it's nice. They're new in this familiar space. Not everything has to change at once.

Morning turns into afternoon. Mulder doesn't seem to mind her post-run sweatiness (they've been through much too much, she thinks, for a little sweat to come between them). He fixes sandwiches or soup for lunch, or offers her leftovers, and serves them up with the more interesting points of the cases he's working. She shares her stories, but leaves out the most gruesome bits. Mulder's never had as strong a stomach as she has. 

So they spend their weekend mornings together, and sometimes she texts him when she's working to see if he wants to do dinner, and sometimes he texts her and asks if she wants to play bar trivia (she doesn't particularly, but she enjoys Mulder's mumbling when the college students inevitably win), and sometimes she kisses him goodnight and sometimes she doesn't. August turns into September turns into October and the leaves are changing. Kismet romps between them, leaves crunching under his leaping paws, and they share a bottle of water. It feels like a kiss when he passes it back to her, his smile lighting up his whole face. 

"Is this working?" he texts her. "I feel like it's working."

"It's working," she texts back without even pausing.

"Score one for codependence," he texts.

"You're incorrigible," she tells him.

"Is that your medical opinion?" he asks.

"A diagnosis after all these years," she says.

She imagines him smiling and curls up around her pillow, smiling too.

\+ + + +

For his birthday, she gives him a six pack of beer and a copy of The Lazarus Bowl. They watch it together. Kismet burrows between them on the couch, his head in Scully's lap. She scratches his ears and cringes.

"I'd forgotten how awful this is," she says.

"I think I'm free-associating," he replies, his voice hollow.

"God, Wayne Federman," she says, pulling her feet up. When she tucks them under her legs, her body tips toward his, and she lets it. "Can you imagine Skinner in college, making friends with that guy?"

"College parties, Scully," he says. "Surely you've experienced them."

"This may surprise you, Mulder," she tells him, "but I didn't go to very many college parties. The pre-med curriculum keeps you busy."

"Not to mention rewriting Einstein for your thesis," he teases.

"I'll never live that down," she murmurs, stroking Kismet's head.

"I was charmed," he tells her. "If they were sending me a green agent to keep an eye on me, at least it was somebody smart enough to question the workings of the universe."

"Or foolish enough," she says.

He eases his arm around her shoulder, and it feels like it belongs there, like it completes something. "Not foolish," he tells her.

She moves closer to Mulder. Kismet pushes against her as the space allotted to him narrows, and then tips himself off the couch, glaring at her and Mulder as he flops down on his bed. She shifts even closer to Mulder, her hand landing gently on his thigh.

"What did I know at twenty-three?" she murmurs, half to herself.

"More than I know now," he tells her. "Time changes people."

"But not so much that you don't know them," she says.

"Maybe it depends on how far you go," he says.

She shakes her head. "I like to think you can always come home, no matter how long you're away. That the connections between people can't be severed by distance or time."

"I like to think that too," he tells her.

She looks up and him and he leans down to rest his forehead against hers. She sighs contentedly and lets her head drift down to his shoulder.

"This movie really is terrible," she says.

"We had fun, though," he says. "California. Micah Hoffman. Dinner. Dancing. I have a confession, though, Scully."

"What?" She nestles into the bulk of him. She likes this new muscular Mulder. He has a reassuring heft. 

"I was in the bath when I called you," he says. "When I told you Skinner was taking a bubble bath. Skinman wasn't the only one who went Hollywood that night."

She smiles into the hollow of his neck. "Me too."

"Ah, Scully," he says with satisfaction.

"We've always been like-minded," she says. "In our way."

"We could have been in the bath together," he says playfully.

"There's still time," she says. "The tub isn't as big here, though."

"Any time you need me to make a run to Lush, Scully, you just say the word," he says.

It feels right, she thinks. She isn't forgetting any of their time together, the ecstatic moments and the soul-searing grief, but she feels comfortable under the curve of his arm. They are still right together, as they have always been, their bodies and their minds fitting together with a surprising precision. Agents Scully and Mulder, she thinks, for better or for worse, as long as they both shall live. 

She watches the Cigarette-Smoking Pontiff threaten the character called Scully as the amalgamation based on Mulder is nearly crowned king of the zombies. She almost looks away as the fake agents embrace in the coffin, their breathing as exaggerated as the terrible jokes. Kismet looks up and then makes another grumbling noise and lies down again.

"How did they know about the bees?" she asks, astounded she has never wondered before.

"I'm blaming Skinner," Mulder says.

"Did you tell him we kissed?" she asks, making her voice light.

"We didn't kiss," he says.

"Mulder," she protests, "kissing was imminent."

"Imminent, perhaps, but not consummated," he corrects her.

"Consummated or not," she says, "you must have told Skinner."

"I don't remember telling him," Mulder hedges. "On the other hand, I did get shot. I might not have been in my right mind."

"Hmm," she says.

"Maybe Frohike had my hallway bugged," he suggests.

"That does sound like him," she agrees. "For a number of reasons."

"I don't know if that's the important part," Mulder says.

She tips her head until she can look up at him and gazes at him for a moment. "All right, I'll bite. What's the important part?" 

"It seems to me we never really got that first kiss," he says, pursing his lips.

"Logically our next kiss would be our first kiss," she says, shifting away from him. "New Year's, maybe. Not the millennium, might I remind you."

"All these years later, still a math geek," he says. "But that's not our first kiss, Scully. We missed it."

"Mulder, that doesn't make any sense. The first time we kissed was our first kiss," she argues.

"But it's not the first time we were going to kiss," he insists. "That's what counts. There's a magic to the first kiss. A hallway in a hospital can't recapture that moment, Dick Clark or no."

"That wasn't magical for you?" she asks, trying and failing to conceal a smirk. 

"It was," he says. "But it wasn't like the moment I knew I was going to kiss you for the first time, and I saw you knew it too."

"I did," she says, and she can't keep the memory of that moment out of her voice, the rough honeyed desire she felt looking at him.

"I had my hands around your face," he says, turning and cupping her face between warm palms. "And you had your hand on the back of my neck."

"I remember," she says, playing along, sliding her hand up his bicep and over his shoulder. She lets her nails scratch gently over his skin where he needs his neck shaved. "And you looked at me with these eyes that see forever."

"And you looked back at me," he says in the voice that has always, will always scrape just the right way across every nerve she's got. "And you were a little afraid."

"I was," she admits. God, she's a little afraid now of the way they always manage to rub each other just the right way, strike-anywhere matches bursting into flame. "But I wanted it. I wanted you to do it."

"I was terrified," he says. "That you were going to leave. That I'd never see you again. That you wouldn't know what you meant to me. I told the truth badly, because I was scared."

"I knew," she says. "I was afraid of the same things. But you leaned toward me, so slowly."

"I wanted to give you an out," he says, and they've found their way back to that hallway. It's a second chance she never thought she'd have. 

"Xeno's paradox," she says, leaning closer. "I thought you would never reach me, always coming halfway."

"We've always met each other halfway," he murmurs, almost against her lips.

"And then just as your lips brushed mine," she says, feeling her own breath rebound from his mouth. 

"A sting rang out," he jokes, but almost before the words are out she's kissing him, so deep and desperate that it surprises even her. A first kiss, she barely manages to think, one that shakes the world to its roots. She pulls him down and he leans into her, wrapping her up in him. Her tongue is eager and urgent against his, and he returns her passion in equal measure. His hands slide down her body and she moans a little, and Kismet barks from the floor.

"That's enough commentary from the peanut gallery," Mulder says, pointing, and Kismet barks again.

"If it isn't bees, it's dogs," she says wryly. "Just our luck, Mulder."

"I feel lucky," he tells her.

"Have we redeemed ourselves?" she asks, patting her hair gently back into shape. Her face is hot - she knows her cheeks are flushed, and she imagines the blush washes all the way down her throat to her chest.

 

"I think that's a definite yes," Mulder tells her. "I felt the magic. Did you feel it, Scully? Our first kiss."

She reaches for the remote and turns off the movie. "I'd like to feel it again, with less interference."

"Of course," he says. "I know how you like solid evidence, Scully."

"I'm a scientist," she demures. "I prefer not to extrapolate from limited data. But I'm willing to hear your further thoughts on the subject of magic as related to first kisses."

"Mutt, office," Mulder commands, and Kismet goes into his kennel, casting Mulder a slightly put-upon look as Mulder closes the door.

Scully slips her hand into Mulder's and leads him upstairs and God, it's everything the first time should be. It's everything her first times never were, even with Mulder, and she feels honored and blessed and so, so lucky that they have arrived at this place with enough time left to enjoy it. Two decades are a heartbeat. Two decades passed in the blink of an eye, she thinks, the two of them haunting the shadows, but they will go into the next stage of their lives with open eyes. 

She traces his fingers, cupped over her heart. His arm fits snugly over her waist, and the shape of him is comforting and familiar behind her. She is happy. She wants to tell everyone who told her that she and Mulder were bad for each other, that they could only walk a dark path. But living well is the best revenge, she supposes, and she would rather spend her time on this. On them. 

In the morning, things will be different. She will welcome the change with open arms.


	13. Home

He takes her out for dinner on her birthday. There are no Sno-balls, no keychains, and no untimely deaths. It's a normal dinner, that ordinary people would have, and she doesn't look over her shoulder once wondering if anyone's watching them.

"Mulder," she says as they sip coffee and share a piece of cake (how far they've come from the high-octane gas station brews and candy bars of their younger years).

"Scully," he says, warm and happy. "Sorry, Dana."

"I want to come home," she says. "If that's all right with you." She's certain it will be. She's been leaving things at the house for months: a toothbrush, a few changes of clothes, her running shoes, her favorite shampoo. She's woken up in his arms most mornings. And it's been good. It's made sense. 

"I'll clean out a drawer for you," he teases, but his eyes are soft and full of more light than the candles can account for. 

She gives him a look out of habit, and he reaches over to take her hand. 

"I really didn't know if you would ever want to be with me again," he says.

"Neither did I," she tells him. "But it feels right, Mulder. I've been happy with you, the last few months. We've been happy together."

"That's all I could ever want," he told her. "We can move, if you'd rather have someplace that feels like neutral ground."

"No," she said. "Mulder, I want to come home."

She calls the movers the next day. It takes a couple of weeks to get things scheduled, but she feels so calm and satisfied about the whole process that it doesn't even seem to matter. She boxes up her treasures, sorts through her closet, empties her fridge.

As she opens the door to Mulder's knock, she realizes this is the first time he's even seen her apartment. He's wearing his work suit, looking a little bashful. The movers look sideways at him, hefting heavier and heavier boxes. Mulder looks like he's about to do something stupid and potentially throw his back out. Scully squeezes his bicep soothingly and takes his jacket. He unbuttons his cuffs and rolls up his sleeves. She gazes at him approvingly. He's still strong, his forearms nicely muscled. She would love to watch the tension and countertension in his body as he lifted things, but she'd rather have him functional at the end of the day. 

He stands in her living room and surveys it, and for a moment she's glad that she never brought him here. Aside from her bathroom, she's never done much to make the rest of the place look lived-in. The walls are bare and the furniture is too modern to look comfortable. Her place, through his eyes, looks like a nice hotel. (Nice hotels, she's learned, just hide the bloodstains better.)

She lets Mulder take her precious things while she directs the movers and meets the people who are buying her nice hotel furniture. She is selling every piece of it on Craigslist: the bed she has never shared, the couch on which she rarely watched movies, the chair which only served to hold the books she kept meaning to read. She watches it go without regrets, not even counting the money people give her until she's ready to put the whole stash in the glovebox. 

"Your Craigslist furniture business seems profitable," he teases, setting her jewelry in the car. "You're not quitting the FBI, are you?" 

"My pieces didn't work with yours," she tells him.

"That's not what you said last night," he says in a voice that ought to be regulated, and she feels the blood rush to her face. He makes her feel like a twenty-something again, hungry for the feel of him against her, the growl of his voice as he flirts with her. They deserve these moments, she thinks, a second chance at first times. An opportunity to be new to each other, precious after decades of familiarity breeding contempt, or at least exhaustion. She has never not loved Mulder, but she has hated him sometimes. She is profoundly grateful for these halcyon days they have stumbled into. She knows as well as anyone that hard work and devotion have never guaranteed a happy ending, and yet they've built one together that seems to have the foundation to last. There are no monsters in their closets now. 

"I'm glad you like my furnishings," he says, winking. The flicker of his eyes across her body makes her hot all over again. 

"Well," she murmurs, "we might need a new mattress. I'm not sure the old one's up to the challenge."

"Hey, Scully," he says playfully, "we never made out in your apartment."

"Now that's a shame," she says, backing up against the counter in the kitchen and tugging him down. Their mouths meet in a rush; here, she thinks, is the fountain of youth, not in the Florida woods, but in the hot rush of Mulder's breath and the enveloping pressure of Mulder's hands around her hips. She doesn't even realize the movers have returned until they whistle. She breaks away from Mulder reluctantly, loathe to release her grip on his shirt front. There's a crumpled place over his heart. 

"To be continued," she whispers. All the way to the house, she fantasizes about what they'll do together in their bed, in their house, in their new life together. The first night of the rest of their lives, she thinks, and by God, the spirit is willing and the flesh, she hopes, is still limber enough to keep up.

"Scully, you live here," he says as they lie in bed after the movers have left. His voice is full of wonder. 

"I feel like this is where you would say 'Honey, I'm home'," she says, smiling and shifting against him. They fit better than ever, even when he bends down to kiss her. She wraps her arms around his neck and they hold each other up. They undress each other slowly, with lengthy intermissions for all the necessary caresses and kisses. She can't get enough of him: his hands, his mouth, his body. They are on their sides, gazing at each other, and they are finally safe. She guides his hands over her body, unspoken communication, and lets him show her the light. The tight coil of pleasure inside her unwinds: her body is a wave and a particle, sparking through the universe and illuminating everything. He kisses her gently as she comes back to herself. She catches her breath, timing it to the even rhythm of his hips, and then urges him to a faster cadence until he too comes undone. 

She wakes up draped over him and smiles to herself. Nothing has ever been like waking up next to Mulder. She feels replenished. She has been missing him, suffering from a deficiency of Mulder despite all the time they've spent together, the last few months. Finally they are restored to themselves and to each other. 

Each of them takes a couple of days off so that they can unpack and rearrange together. Scully puts her books back on the bookshelf, and it's as satisfying as finishing a puzzle or closing a case and slotting the file folder into the drawer. She turns on the radio as she works. Kismet picks up his toys one by one and tosses them at her, trying to tempt her into playing. She tosses them back but keeps unpacking until Mulder comes up behind her and brushes her hair to one side. He leans in and kisses the nape of her neck. She shivers, desire lighting up her nerves like a display at the Smithsonian. She turns in his arms, brushing her lips against his. "Private Eyes" plays on the radio and it feels like the first dance at a wedding, a quiet, precious moment with Kismet peering up at them.

She's home.

They haven't talked about getting married in a long time. Mulder used to incorporate wedding rings into their disguises once in a while, and made a show of presenting them to her the first few times, but he never really asked. They talked around it in an abstract way, but she didn't want anything furtive or rushed. She couldn't imagine feeling any closer to him, or any more strongly linked to him. Every moment with him was a vow: for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, 'til death do us part. They never had to say it. 

She wants this to last. She wants to be dancing like this, for no reason at all, for the rest of their lives. She wants to stand in the light with him, hand in hand, and brighten the world. 

"Would you go back to the X-Files if they reopened them tomorrow?" she asks, afraid of the answer despite the absolute security of his arms.

"Not without you," he promises. "And not unless it was your idea. I'd be afraid of myself, Scully."

"I wouldn't let you fall into the darkness," she says, her words sharp-edged, as if she could use them to slice through every villain that tried to drag them down.

"You shouldn't have to rein me in," he tells her. "It's too much to ask of you."

"Are you happy without the work?" she asks. Her throat is tight.

He kisses her forehead. His day's worth of stubble scrapes gently against her skin. "I still have everything that's important to me," he says. "If you ever want to spend the weekend investigated a haunted hotel, Scully, you let me know. I'll make reservations."

"Mulder," she says, and pauses.

"Hmm?" he prompts.

"Nothing," she says. "You told me once not to give up on a miracle. I thought I'd already gotten my miracle."

"Maybe this is mine," he says. "We'll share it, just like we did the last one."

The song changes to some upbeat pop song she doesn't know, a hit from today, but they're still swaying to the steady rhythm of their heartbeats, and nothing else matters.

Before work the next morning, he hands her a box. She sets down her coffee and holds the box in both hands. It isn't ticking. It isn't heavy. 

"What's this?" she asks. "It's too early for nicely-wrapped presents, Mulder. My birthday was weeks ago."

"Official housewarming present," he says. "Open it."

Kismet comes to sit at her feet and leans against her, soulful eyes asking for whatever's in the box. Scully smiles at him and then looks back at Mulder. 

"Should I be worried?"

"Just open it," Mulder says with a smile. "It's from both of us."

Scully lifts the lid off the box, revealing nothing she would have guessed. "A lint roller," she says with amusement.

"You'll need it," Mulder says with laughter in his eyes. He pulls her close and kisses her. Kismet wags and leans against her leg.

\+ + + +

It works. She isn't sure exactly why or how, but it works. She wakes up next to him. He runs by her side as they pass Kismet's leash back and forth between them. Sometimes they drive to work together, but it isn't always convenient, and that's fine too. They go to therapy, separately, and compare notes about the advice they get. Sometimes they laugh. Sometimes they roll their eyes. At least their therapists have both given up on trying to keep them apart. 

It isn't perfect every day, but they've learned how to deal with that. They find ways to give each other space when they need to. Kismet trots back and forth with his favorite stuffed hedgehog until they're back in the same room, and then he flops down with the satisfaction of a dog who has done a job well.

The house is a sanctuary for them. Neither of them brings work home, and each of them understands when the other has to stay late at work. They spend the weekends running to the farmer's market for each season's fresh produce and working on personal projects: she writes about the things they've seen and done, cataloguing the strangeness of the universe, and Mulder starts his book. 

They've done it, somehow. She didn't really think they could. She felt so mired in their old life, two specimens preserved in a bog, and the only grace she could find in the situation was that at least they were together. But now they cook together, and divide the little responsibilities of cleaning, and manage not to jump each time the wind rattles the door or the floor creaks in the middle of the night. Their wounds have healed over, she thinks: they remember what they've suffered, but the pain has eased, and they know what to do when old scars ache. 

One night Skinner comes over for dinner. Mulder cooks and Scully dresses the salad and opens a bottle of wine. They eat and drink and talk, and she thinks that things have never been so easy. It's a nice change. Skinner says something to Mulder as he leaves and Mulder smiles wryly, holding Kismet back from frolicking out into the night. 

"What was all that about?" Scully asks, coming up and putting an arm around his waist.

Mulder shakes his head, pulling her closer. "Nothing."

She reaches up and brushes his hair out of his eyes. "I think you're going salt and pepper," she tells him. She sounds soft and sentimental even to her own ears, but she can't help it. She loves him. She's happy. It's not easy to be at peace with peacefulness, but she's pleased to keep trying. 

"I've earned it," he tells her, and wraps his arms around her. 

\+ + + +

In April the phone rings in the middle of the night. Scully fumbles for it. It's an unknown number.

"Hello?" she rasps out.

"Dana Scully?" a woman's voice asks. "I'm calling because you're Margaret Scully's emergency contact. We've had to admit her to the hospital."

"I'll be right there," Scully says, and hangs up. 

"What is it?" Mulder mumbles, rolling toward her. 

"Mom," Scully says, already fumbling for her clothes. Mulder drives. Scullly's hands are trembling. She clenches them together in her lap and wills every light to be green. Mulder reaches over and rests a hand on her shoulder.

A heart attack, the doctor says. She's fine, the doctor says. Scully nods automatically. Mulder rests his hand at the small of her back and she leans against him just enough to let him know she appreciates the gesture as she demands to see her mother's charts. 

"I can't let you do that," the doctor says.

"I'm a medical doctor," Scully says, in the tone that makes it very clear that she's experienced in using deadly force. The doctor yields. Scully looks at the charts. She calls her brothers. She holds her mother's hand. Her mother's skin is cool and feels papery and delicate under Scully's fingers. 

"Dana, I'm fine," Maggie says, but Scully hears the tremor underneath the firmness. 

"Mom, you had a heart attack," Scully tells her.

"I remember," Maggie says. "But I'm all right now."

"I'm going to make sure of that," Scully says. 

Mulder brings her coffee and a sandwich, neither of which are from a vending machine, and sits quietly. 

"Go home," he says at dawn. "Get some sleep. I'll be here."

"Mulder, I can't," she says.

"Dana," her mother says, "go."

She goes, and sleeps for a few fitful hours, and then comes back to speak firmly to the doctor, who isn't doing nearly as much as she would like. She haunts the hallways, glaring at every medical professional she can find. 

The hospital releases Maggie a few days later, swearing that she's stabilized, that she's recovering. It takes half the day to get them to truly release her. Scully bristles at the attendants who settle her mother into the wheelchair to escort her out. It's procedure and she knows that, but Maggie looks so small and wan with the blanket tucked around her. Mulder helps Maggie into the car and Maggie thanks him, a weary note in her voice. Scully flinches and makes sure all the paperwork is taken care of. 

Scully drives this time, her knuckles pale as she clutches the wheel. Maggie walks on her own to the door of her house under Scully's supervision. She knows she's hovering, but she can't help it. Her mother has never really seemed old until this moment, but the steel in her spine is slowly giving way. Mulder gets Maggie settled in the bedroom. Scully arranges food in the fridge: low-sodium broth, heart-healthy ingredients. She stands staring into the fridge, gazing blankly into the glare of the light, and suddenly it's too much. She closes the fridge and walks out to the car, gets in and just drives away. The setting sun glares in her rearview mirror. She isn't certain where she's going at first, but soon she realizes she's headed for the beach. She needs to see the ocean. Her father is there, somewhere. Her mother will be there one day. She needs the slip of sand under her feet and the rush of surf in her ears. She needs a horizon that will always be infinite.

Her phone rings. She doesn't answer it. After a few minutes, she picks it up and listens to her voicemail. 

"Scully, it's me," Mulder says. She can hear the strain in his voice. "Just let me know where you're going."

She drops her phone back on the seat. The corner of her heart that isn't frozen by fear and grief aches for him. She's grateful that he didn't demand that she return, or ask her for more than a minimum of information. But she can't stop moving, or she'll drown. All she can manage is to text him a picture of the sign that marks the entrance of Sandy Point State Park. It was the closest shoreline she could remember. She pays at the box; she has to swipe her card twice because her hands are still shaking. But then she's through. She parks and stumbles through the parking lot to the beach, leaving her shoes in the car. Twilight is calm. The waves roll in, rasping against the shore and breaking over her toes. Next to their eternal motion, she can finally be still.

She closes her eyes and listens. She can almost feel her father standing next to her. "You can train your ears to hear, Starbuck," he says. "The waves will tell you what the weather will be. Just breathe in and out and let the ocean speak to you."

The waves whisper fair weather and she wants to believe them. She has just found her footing in happiness and she cannot lose her mother. She has lost her father, her sister, her daughter, her son. She has lost her friends and her allies, except for Skinner. She has lost and found Mulder. She has lost and found and lost and found her faith in God and in humanity. She cannot lose her mother. 

Maybe that's the balance of life. Maybe that's the deal she's struck with fate. She can have Mulder, but no one else. She doesn't have to wonder when she made that bargain: she made it every day for years, swore away every chance she'd had for just another day, just a few more minutes. 

She would do it again. She will do it again. She cannot blame or forgive herself for that.

It's no surprise when she hears a car in the parking lot. Mulder will always come after her, whenever he can. If Antarctica wasn't too far, certainly the Maryland shore isn't. She doesn't turn around as he walks across the beach and puts his arms around her waist and his chin on her shoulder. She leans against the comforting bulk of him. Mulder is her anchor in fair weather and foul; she is always on the lee side of him, sheltered from the storm. 

"I'm sorry," she says.

"It's all right," he tells. "I was just worried."

"Suddenly it hit me," Scully says. "One day she'll be gone, and there won't be anything I can do to save her."

"That might be true one day," Mulder says. "But not yet."

She sighs and leans more heavily against him. A cool salt breeze brushes her face, mapping out the dry tracks of her tears. She breathes easier with Mulder's arms around her. Surely there's some medical or scientific explanation for it, but it doesn't matter right now. She will accept the comfort without investigating it. 

"They say the person you think of when you're standing by the ocean is the person you should be with," she says after a moment. It's an old line, but she's sure it will amuse Mulder. 

"I think I heard that once," he says, his voice warm and soft and amused and concerned. "I probably said it once or twice during my teenage years. If you're trying to get to second base, Scully, the answer is yes."

"Mulder," she says with mild reproach.

"Sorry," he says. "It's a reflex."

"I know," she says, smiling up as him as best as she can. "I've been testing your reflexes for years."

"Did you find what you were looking for?" he asks, gazing down at her.

"I found you," she says. He smiles. In the dusk, his face looks smooth and young, a glimpse of the man she first fell in love with. In contradiction to nature, she's never stopped falling. Above the water, the stars wink into view in the darkening sky, but she doesn't need them tonight. Mulder's heart is lodestone enough to guide her. "Let's go home, Mulder."

"I've been waiting all my life to hear you say that, Scully," he tells her.

"We're not waiting anymore," she says, and takes his hand. They walk back to the car, back to the life they are building together.

Fair weather tomorrow, she thinks, as they cross the sand with their fingers twined together. She and Mulder will weather the rest of it as they must. No natural or supernatural force has capsized them yet. They'll endure. She believes in the truth of that, more than she has ever believed anything.

Behind them, the tide slides down the beach, leaving behind the doubled prints of their feet in the wet sand. 

\+ + + + 

“We shall know what things are of overmastering importance when they have overmastered us.”   
\- Dorothy Sayers, _Gaudy Night_


End file.
